Effects of Personality on Social Network Disclosure: Do Emotionally Intelligent Individuals Post Inappropriate Content?

Abstract

The prevalence of individuals using social networking sites to stay connected has increased considerably in only a few years and the information posted is now being used by organizations for employee selection. The purpose of the current study was to investigating how differences on the Big Five Personality traits, honesty-integrity, and emotional intelligence influence whether individuals post inappropriate social network content. Participants were 506 college students from a large metropolitan state university in the Southeastern United States. Results suggest individuals scoring high on emotional intelligence and honesty/integrity disclosed less inappropriate social network content. Emotional intelligence was not, however, predictive of inappropriate disclosure above and beyond the Big Five Personality traits. Honest and emotionally intelligent individuals seem to understand the negative implications of disclosing inappropriate social network content. Future research should examine how social network information is being used in employee selection and the predictive validity of this method.

Keywords

• social network
• emotional intelligence
• Big Five personality
• inappropriate disclosure
• hiring decisions