Two faces of narcissism on SNS: The distinct effects of vulnerable and grandiose narcissism on SNS privacy control

Highlights

• We approach narcissism in two constructs – vulnerable and grandiose narcissism.

• Vulnerable narcissism has significant influence on SNS users' privacy control.

• Grandiose narcissism has no influence on SNS user's privacy control.

• Such distinct effects were found when controlling other personality predictors.

Abstract

This study suggests narcissism as an important psychological factor that predicts one’s behavioral intention to control information privacy on SNS. Particularly, we approach narcissism as a two-dimensional construct—vulnerable and grandiose narcissism—to provide a better understanding of the role of narcissism in SNS usage. As one of the first studies to apply a two-dimensional approach to narcissism in computer-mediated communication, our results show that vulnerable narcissism has a significant positive effect on behavioral intention to control privacy on SNS, while grandiose narcissism has no effect. This effect was found when considering other personality traits, including self-esteem, computer anxiety, and concern for information privacy. The results indicate that unidimensional approaches to narcissism cannot solely predict SNS behaviors, and the construct of narcissism should be broken down into two orthogonal constructs.

Introduction

Over the past few years, technology advances in social networking sites (SNS) have allowed people to share interpersonal information at a very rapid rate and now, nearly everything that an individual does on SNS can be broadcasted in real-time to the entire network. The ability to immediately access personal information on SNS, however, introduces an inevitable tradeoff cost – the potential loss of privacy. Unlike other Internet platforms that have an anonymous nature, many SNS require users to disclose private information (O’Brien & Torres, 2012). Given that the large amount of information on SNS is personal, the potential risks that are associated with unsafe use of private information have become a primary concern among SNS users (Debatin et al., 2009, Taneja et al., 2014). While increasing attention has been paid to the issue of SNS privacy, less is known about discrete personality traits that might explain how people control information about themselves on SNS.

The objective of our study is, therefore, to identify psychological factors that predict user responses to privacy-threatening activities on SNS. To this end, we focus on the concept of narcissism as a predictor, because narcissism significantly influences people to expose personal information on SNS (Bergman et al., 2011, Carpenter, 2012, DeWall et al., 2011, Leung, 2013, Mehdizadeh, 2010). Particularly, we approach narcissism as a two-dimensional construct, comprised of (1) grandiose narcissism and (2) vulnerable narcissism. Although the concept of narcissism has received considerable attention in SNS literature, most empirical studies in computer-mediated communication have analyzed narcissism as a one-dimensional construct (e.g., Bergman et al., 2011, Davenport et al., 2014, DeWall et al., 2011, Mehdizadeh, 2010). Yet, empirical evidence in social psychology suggests that narcissism should be viewed as two orthogonal constructs (Besser and Priel, 2010, Hendin and Cheek, 1997, Miller et al., 2011, Wink, 1991). Following this stream of research in psychology, the current study considers two distinctive dimensions of narcissism, and this is one of the first studies in information literature to approach narcissism from this perspective.

Furthermore, in order to better assess the distinctive effect of the two forms of narcissism on information control, we consider other traits in our investigation, drawing from both psychology and information privacy literature. These traits include self-esteem, computer anxiety, and concern for information privacy. The findings from our study provide both theoretical and managerial implications regarding personality traits and their predictability to explain users’ responses to the issue of privacy infringement on SNS.