How a user's personality influences content engagement in social media

TL;DR

This study investigates how personality traits influence social media engagement during disasters, revealing that extroverts share more content while individuals with depressive traits are more likely to share informative content, impacting information spread.

Contribution

It combines EEG, personality surveys, and social media prompts to systematically analyze how personality affects content sharing behavior during emergencies.

Findings

Extroverts are more likely to share content.

Individuals with depressive traits tend to share more informative content.

Personality influences social contagion and information dissemination.

Abstract

Social media presents an opportunity for people to share content that they find to be significant, funny, or notable. No single piece of content will appeal to all users, but are there systematic variations between users that can help us better understand information propagation? We conducted an experiment exploring social media usage during disaster scenarios, combining electroencephalogram (EEG), personality surveys, and prompts to share social media, we show how personality not only drives willingness to engage with social media but also helps to determine what type of content users find compelling. As expected, extroverts are more likely to share content. In contrast, one of our central results is that individuals with depressive personalities are the most likely cohort to share informative content, like news or alerts. Because personality and mood will generally be highly correlated between friends via homophily, our results may be an import factor in understanding social contagion.