PLAIN ENGLISH STATEMENT OF RESULTS

Thesis Title: Social Identity Online and the Cultural Devaluation of Introversion
Student Researcher: Vanessa Thompson, Central Queensland University
Thank you to all of those Facebook MBTI Group members who took the time to participate in
the survey for this thesis project. A plain English statement of the results follows.
Overview. Social identity is that part of an individuals self-concept which comes from their
membership in groups. When we say I am an Australian woman or I am a Christian iceskater or I am an introvert stay-at-home father, we are describing our social identity or
identities, categorising ourselves and in this way claiming something about who we are by
invoking our membership in those social groups. Social identification with groups in this
way benefits us in a number of ways. For example, it helps meet our needs for
belongingness, allows us to align ourselves with similar others and access their social
support, and helps clearly position ourselves within the social world.
This project developed from an interest in how people may use internet groups (not just face
to face groups) for social identification relating to their personality. The main hypothesis was
that introverts feel their personality type to be devalued due to a cultural preference for
extraverted personality characteristics. Additionally, it was expected that because of this
cultural devaluation, introverts turn to the internet to seek to feel better about themselves and
their personality, particularly by accessing other introverts through online groups (such as
Facebook Groups). Previous research has shown that groups who feel their social identity to
be of low status may compensate by increasing its importance in their lives.
To explore this, the project used an online survey posted in Facebook MBTI personality-type
Groups to compare introverts with extraverts on the extent to which they felt their personality
type to be culturally devalued. Additionally, introverts and extraverts were compared in
regard to how much they were motivated to use online groups for gratifying social identity
needs relating to their personality (introvert/extravert), and whether this was associated with
decreased loneliness and increased authenticity and self-liking.
Participants. 404 participants fully completed the online survey, with approximately twothirds identifying as female. 73% of participants identified themselves as White/Caucasian,
and 14% as Asian. The majority lived in North America (55%), with 22% living in Europe.
The largest age groups were 18 to 24 (30%) and 25 to 34 (34%). Approximately 69% of
participants identified themselves as introverts.
Results. Participants were asked questions to find out how worthy they believed other
people in general judged their introvert/extravert personality type to be (i.e., collective selfesteem). Results showed that introverts had lower collective self-esteem than extraverts and
that this was lower than other frequently discriminated-against groups, such as Black
Americans collective self-esteem relating to their ethnic group, and transsexuals collective

self-esteem relating to their sexual identity. Also, while 74% of introverts had ever wished
they were extraverts, 40% of extraverts had ever wished they were introverts.
Other results showed that, in general, and compared to extraverts, introverts were more
strongly identified with their personality type (being an introvert was more important to who
they were), were less emotionally stable, were more lonely, more alienated from themselves,
and liked themselves less. For participants in general, those who were less emotionally stable
also liked themselves less, were less authentic, more self-alienated and lonelier; this
association was stronger for extraverts than introverts.
As predicted, for introverts, lower emotional stability (neuroticism) and lower collective selfesteem was associated with use of Facebook MBTI Groups for meeting personality-related
social identity needs. Also, introverts who used the Groups for meeting personality-related
social identity needs were more likely to have lower scores on self-liking and higher scores
on self-alienation while extraverts who used the Groups for this purpose were more likely to
be those who more highly personally valued their personality type.
Results did not show any support for expected benefits from use of the Groups for gratifying
personality-type related social identity needs.
If you have any further questions, comments, or would like further information
regarding this project, please contact the student researcher:
vanessa.thompson@cqumail.com.