Personality attributes of bloggers
Helen Jaques
Sunday, 07 September 2008 22:41 UTC
The Clinical Cases and Images blog has highlighted a recent study on which of the “Big Five” personality traits are most common among bloggers.
Apparently:
“People who are high in openness to new experience and high in neuroticism are likely to be bloggers. Additionally … women who are high in neuroticism are more likely to be bloggers as compared to those low in neuroticism whereas there was no difference for men.”
What do you all think? Are female bloggers inherently neurotic?!
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Oh wow, that is way too close to the truth. The second part is for me, anyway. I do fully admit to being fully neurotic. I am not sure how that relates to the compulsion (or propensity) to blog.
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This is quite interesting, Helen.
Since I am not sure that the article itself is very accessible, I’ll just copy out the definition of the “big five”, because I didn’t know really what neurotic meant. But the authors were pretty clear that they were looking for “predictors of being a blogger” as opposed to the other way around: if you are a female, neurotic undergraduate who is open to new experiences, you might be more likely to keep a blog than your self-satisfied, close-minded peer on the cheerleading squad. Keep in mind that “Participants were 89 (25 males and 57 female) students from a large [U.S.] Southeastern University” so as to avoid the type of skew in interpretation that Ben recently reported.
- high in neuroticism tend to be emotionally unstable: they are anxious, insecure, and self-pitying, whereas those who are low in neuroticism are emotionally stable: they are calm, secure and self-satisfied.
- high in extraversion are sociable, fun-loving, and affectionate, whereas individuals who are low in extraversion are introverted: retiring, sober, and reserved.
- high in openness are imaginative, prefer variety, and independent, whereas those who are low in openness are down to earth, prefer routine, and tend to be conformers.
- high in agreeableness tend to be soft-hearted, trusting, and helpful, whereas those who are low in agreeableness tend to be ruthless, suspicious, and uncooperative.
- high in conscientiousness tend to be well-organized, careful, and self-disciplined, whereas those who are low in conscientiousness are disorganized, careless, and weak willed.
The authors wrote: “individuals who maintain blogs mostly discuss details of their personal lives and are likely to use other forums for online social interaction.” That predicts NN use pretty well! And they get quite often back to the fundamental question – why do you blog? Back to you, Helen!
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The article itself is subscription-only so I can read only the abstract. As well as their definition of “neuroticism”, with which one might take issue, one can also question how they assigned these personalities to their subjects (we all know how intrinsically unreliable these types of study are from many notorious examples, for example how superficial are these apparent personality traits and were they assigned by self-assessment which is even more notoriously inaccurate than external assessments?).
I have never met anyone who isn’t “neurotic” in some aspect, whether that person is apparently (that day) introverted or extroverted. (And yes, I do know a little about these definitions.)
I wondered about the sample sizes and composition. There were two studies reported, Heather notes that one of them is of 25 male and 57 female US undergraduates. Enough said. I don’t believe a word of any subsequent conclusion based on a sample of that size and composition.
I suppose this is covered in the article itself, but how long had these people been blogging for, how regularly did they post, what level of content, etc?
As I listed in my presentation at Sci Blogging, and was discussed at another parallel session; as Martin Fenner has written in a subsequent post; and many others have written and said – people “blog” for all kinds of reasons and for many different purposes. Blogs themselves are a medium not (only) a message: they can and are used for a host of different purposes.
I do not attach any value to this study based on what I can see of it.
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Thanks for looking into this a bit more Heather. I can’t get my hands on the full text to suss out the credentials of the study but thought I would be mischievous and put it out there anyway ;)
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Well, you got me going ;-)
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I would be hesitant to draw a too wide conclusion based on “US undergraduates who blog” as in the “blogging among everyone”.
But sure, it might be true that females who blog are more neurotic. Although, all those fashion blogs written and maintained by women seem to be less neurotic and more “look at this lovely cardigan/shoes/hat”.
I think, although I have no proof of it, that it will depend on the “kind” of blog if the woman behind it falls into the neurotic category or not.
Then again, it’s the age old thing that men tend not to show their insecurities as much as women so I don’t know if the “neurotic” attribute erally is a relevant one.
Sorry, don’t mean to bash. I just am a little against “easy definitions and conclusions based on small sample sizes”.
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Hey, I’m neurotic (that personality test on facebook said so, so it must be true), and I don’t even (have my own) blog (yet)..
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Touche, Steffi!
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I don’t feel qualified to even touch this question. I think all female bloggers are the best bloggers ever :)
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Wise man. You will go far.
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