AUTHOR=Li Haojian , Wang X.T. 

TITLE=Cyber-Personality and Liking Expression: A Study From WeChat Users in China

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=12

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.626040

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2021.626040

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>Clicking the <italic>like</italic> button following a post on social media has become a common means of expressing and gathering social support online. Little is known about how <italic>liking</italic> expression is linked and regulated by personality traits and communication motives. Following a preliminary survey (<italic>n</italic> = 168) about the usage of the <italic>like</italic> function on WeChat, a Chinese social media platform, we conducted an online study (<italic>n</italic> = 183) to map the Big-Five personality traits and five communication motives to the frequency (likelihood) of <italic>liking</italic> expression. The results showed that each user had, on average, 385 WeChat friends and spent 2.2 hours and used the <italic>liking</italic> function 1.1 times each day on WeChat. The personality trait <italic>conscientiousness</italic> was negatively related to the <italic>liking</italic> expression (β = −0.505, <italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.05). In contrast, <italic>agreeableness</italic> promoted the expression of <italic>liking</italic> directly (β = 0.153, <italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.05) and indirectly via two communication motives, <italic>enjoyment</italic> (a: β = 0.377, <italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.01; b: β = 0.433, <italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.001) and <italic>passing time</italic> (c: β = 0.578, <italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.05; d: β = 0.523, <italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.001). The <italic>liking</italic> expression may serve as a simple index for understanding dispositional underpinnings of social media networking.</p>