Challenge Accepted! Evaluating the Personality and Social Network Characteristics of Individuals Who Participated in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
Keywords:
ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, Big 5 personality characteristics, online social capital, opinion leadership, Facebook, social media campaignsAbstract
The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was a popular campaign on Facebook for raising awareness and money for the research of ALS. Given its unprecedented success, it is important to identify the personality and individual difference characteristics that distinguished participants from non-participants. Using an online survey of Facebook users (N = 261), this study investigates the influence that the Big Five personality variables, narcissism, altruism, online social capital, and online opinion leadership have on participation in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Results indicated that extraversion, openness to experience, and altruism positively predict bridging social capital on Facebook. Facebook users with higher social capital were found to have greater opinion leadership on Facebook, which in turn made them more likely to participate in the ALS Ice Bucket challenge. These findings have important implications for predicting which individuals will participate in future online social campaigns, which may help organizers target these audiences.
References
Ames, D. R., Rose, P., & Anderson, C. P. (2006). The NPI-16 as a short measure of narcissism. Journal of Research in Personality, 40(4), 440–450. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2005.03.002
Baay, P. E., Van Aken, M. A. G., De Ridder, D. T. D., & Van der Lippe, T. (2014). Understanding the role of social capital in adolescents’ Big Five personality effects on school-to-work transitions. Journal of Adolescence, 37(5), 739–748. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2014.04.015
Buffardi, L. E., & Campbell, W. K. (2008). Narcissism and social networking web sites. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(10), 1303–1314. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167208320061
Burt, R. S. (1999). The social capital of opinion leaders. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 566, 37–54. https://doi.org/10.1177/000271629956600104
Carpenter, C. J., Boster, F. J., Kotowski, M., & Day, J. P. (2015). Evidence for the validity of a social connectedness scale: Connectors amass bridging social capital online and offline. Communication Quarterly, 63(2), 119–134. https://doi.org/10.1080/01463373.2015.1012217
Chiu, C.-M., Hsu, M., & Wang, E. T. G. G. (2006). Understanding knowledge sharing in virtual communities: An integration of social capital and social cognitive theories. Decision Support Systems, 42(3), 1872–1888. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.2006.04.001
Choi, J., & Kim, H. J. (2016). Influence of SNS User Innovativeness and Public Individuation on SNS Usage Patterns and Social Capital Development: The Case of Facebook. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 32(12), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2016.1220067
Devaraj, S., Easley, R. F., & Crant, J. M. (2008). Research note —How does personality matter? Relating the five-factor model to technology acceptance and use. Information Systems Research, 19(1), 93–105. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.1070.0153
Falzer, P. (2007). Social capital, communication, and mental health. Presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, San Francisco, CA.
Goldberg, L. R. (1993). The structure of phenotypic personality traits. American Psychologist, 48(1), 26–34. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.48.1.26
Gosling, S. D., (n.d.). A note on alpha reliability and factor structure in the TIPI. Retrieved February 18, 2017 from http://gosling.psy.utexas.edu/scales-weve-developed/ten-item-personality-measure-tipi/a-note-on-alpha-reliability-and-factor-structure-in-the-tipi/
Gosling, S. D., Augustine, A. A., Vazire, S., Holtzmann, N., & Gaddis S. (2011). Manifestations of personality in online social networks: Self reported Facebook-related behaviors and observable profile information. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 14(9), 483-488. https://doi.10.1089/cyber.20/2010.0087
Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B. (2003). A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37(6), 504–528. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0092-6566(03)00046-1
Grieve, R., & Kemp, N. (2015). Individual differences predicting social connectedness derived from Facebook: Some unexpected findings. Computers in Human Behavior, 51, 239–243. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.04.034
John, O. P., Naumann, L. P., & Soto, C. J. (2008). Paradigm shift to the integrative Big Five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and conceptual issues. In O. P. John, R. W. Robins, & L. A. Pervin (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (pp. 114-158). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Jung, Y., Gray, R., Lampe, C., & Ellison, N. (2013). Favors from Facebook friends: Unpacking dimensions of social capital. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 11–20). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2470657
Kim, E., Scheufele, D. A., Han, J. Y., & Shah, D. (2016). Opinion leaders in online cancer support groups: An investigation of their antecedents and consequences. Health Communication, 236(May), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2015.1110005
Lampe, C., Vitak, J., & Ellison, N. B. (2013). Users and nonusers: Interactions between levels of adoption and social capital. Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work (pp. 809–820). https://doi.org/10.1145/2441776.2441867
Maksl, A., & Young, R. (2013). Affording to exchange: Social capital and online information sharing. Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, 16(8), 588–92. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2012.0430
Marshall, R., & Gitosudarmo, I. (1995). Variation in the characteristics of opinion leaders across cultural borders. Journal of International Consumer Marketing, 8(1), 5–22. https://doi.org/10.1300/J046v08n01_02
Mo, R., Leung, L., Hao, Y., Wu, X., Xi, R., & Zhang, S. (2014). Examining the mediating roles of microblog use in the relationships between narcissism, social anxiety, and social capital. International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology and Learning, 4(2), 58–75. https://doi.org/10.4018/ijcbpl.2014040105
Moore, K., & McElroy, J. C. (2012). The influence of personality on Facebook usage, wall postings, and regret. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(1), 267–274. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2011.09.009
Pew Research Center (2017). Social media fact sheet. Retrieved February 18, 2017 from http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/social-media/
Price, L. L. L., Feick, L. F., & Guskey, A. (1995). Everyday market helping behavior. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 14(2), 255–266.
Putnam, R. D. (1995). Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital. Journal of Democracy, 6(1), 65–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0362-3319(02)00190-8
Seidman, G. (2013). Self-presentation and belonging on Facebook: How personality influences social media use and motivations. Personality and Individual Differences, 54(3), 402–407. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.10.009
Steel, E. (2014, August 17). 'Ice Bucket Challenge' has raised millions for ALS Association. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/18/business/ice-bucket-challenge-has-raised-millions-for-als-association.html
Theurer, K., & Wister, A. (2010). Altruistic behaviour and social capital as predictors of well-being among older Canadians. Ageing and Society, 30(1), 157–181. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X09008848
Williams, D. (2006). On and Off the ’Net: Scales for Social Capital in an Online Era. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(2), 593–628. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.00029.x
Zhang, L., Zhao, J., & Xu, K. (2016). Who creates trends in online social media: The Crowd or opinion leaders? Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 21(1), 1-16. https://doig.org/101111/jcc4.12145
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).