Personality and positive orientation in Internet and Facebook addiction. An empirical report from Poland

Highlights

• Personality, positive orientation and Internet and Fb addiction were included.

• 1083 persons took part in the study.

• positive orientation is related to problematic use of both Internet and Facebook.

• extraversion and agreeableness are connected only with problematic Internet use.

Abstract

Nowadays the Internet is used more and more. The use that becomes the most popular is social networking sites. The main aim of our two studies is to find an answer to the question of whether personality and positive orientation are linked to Internet and Facebook addiction. Two studies were conducted, verifying the effects of personality traits and positive orientation on these two kinds of addiction. Study 1 involved 631 participants and Study 2 involved 452. The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale, the Internet Addiction Test, the Short Personality Scale, and the Positive Orientation Scale were used. Our results indicate that lower positive orientation, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience are related to problematic use of both Internet and Facebook. What is more, extraversion and agreeableness are connected only with problematic Internet use.

Introduction

The emergence of the Internet was a technological breakthrough for civilization in the 20th century. Since then, the impact of the Internet has become enormous and omnipresent in all spheres of our lives (Gosling & Mason, 2014). In the course of these years, we have been witnessing the digital world entering our everyday life even more profoundly. Social networking sites (SNSs), which have multiple functions, are one of the forms of online communities (see Beenen et al., 2004). Facebook is an example of the most recognizable and most frequently used SNS. The statistics reaching an average of over 829 million daily active users are the best proof of its popularity (Facebook, 2014). Facebook is an indispensable tool used on a daily basis. Not only is it a source of entertainment, but it also serves as educational and professional purposes. Its applications and functions give their users unlimited possibilities of expressing themselves and sharing their opinions as well as a new way of communicating with each other. However, there is also a dark side of this technological advancement – namely, the increasing number of addicted users (Andreassen & Pallesen, 2014). Although Internet addiction was not included in the latest update to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM-5), the problem is widely acknowledged by scholars and practitioners (Pezoa-Jares, 2012). Facebook addiction may be a subtype of Internet addiction and therefore therapeutic approaches may be used on a similar basis (Andreassen & Pallesen, 2014). There is an urgent need to learn more about this phenomenon and to increase our knowledge on the possible predictors of Internet and Facebook addition. Although the prolific number of articles on that topic that have been published recently (e.g., Błachnio et al., 2013, Caers et al., 2013, Wilson et al., 2012) proves the existence of keen scientific interest, there is still a gap in the literature when it comes to research on Facebook addiction and its relation to Internet addiction. Over the last ten years in psychology, research on changes in Internet usage have been steadily increasing. Initially, scientists studied the psychological aspects of Internet addiction in general but they need to investigate the psychological aspects of specific activities in the Internet. Although studies on the determinants of Internet addiction exist in the literature (e.g., Bozoglan, Demirer, & Sahin, 2013), there is a lack of similar studies on Facebook addiction.

The rates of addicted users vary across different countries depending on the diagnostic tool used (see Kuss, Griffiths, Karila, & Billieux, 2014). Statistics show that Internet addiction is spreading among users and, additionally, new subtypes of this addiction are appearing. Andreassen and Pallesen (2014) stressed there is scarce research on Facebook addiction and therefore it might be difficult to determine the causal relationship and to identify the determinants of social networking site addiction. Despite the criticism of Facebook Addiction Scale (see Griffiths, 2012), more research is needed to explore this concept and to uncover the mechanism behind addiction to Facebook (Andreassen & Pallesen, 2014).

The present research is an attempt to determine the extent to which self-beliefs and personality traits are related to Internet and Facebook addiction. Firstly, this article is aimed at filling a gap in research by investigating the links between Internet addiction and personality traits as well as positive orientation. Secondly, we wanted to verify whether Internet and Facebook addictions were caused by similar patterns and factors. Thirdly, we want to establish the psychological profiles of normal and addicted Internet and Facebook users. We planned two studies checking which factors cause both Internet and Facebook addictions.

Previous studies have shown that Internet addiction and Facebook addiction are linked with some personality factors. Internet addiction was found to be connected with loneliness (Caplan, 2007), depression and low self-esteem (Yang & Tung, 2007), and social anxiety (Caplan, 2007). Numerous studies show that Internet addiction is positively correlated with neuroticism (Yao, He, Ko, & Pang, 2014) and negatively with extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness (Stieger, Burger, Bohn, & Voracek, 2013). Self-esteem explained a considerable amount of variance in Internet addiction (Ayas and Horzum, 2013, Bozoglan et al., 2013); the same was attested for satisfaction with life (e.g., Wang et al., 2013). The cross-cultural comparison between adolescents in the Netherlands and university students in England (Daria J. Kuss, Shorter, van Rooij, van de Mheen, & Griffiths, 2014) confirmed the relationship between the Internet addiction components model and personality. In both samples the Internet addiction components factor negatively correlated with agreeableness and positively with neuroticism. Conscientiousness and resourcefulness were related to it but only in the adolescents'’ group. Regarding addiction to social networking sites (SNSs), SNS usage was found to be positively related to extraversion, introversion, and narcissism (Kuss & Griffiths, 2011). Conscientiousness correlated negatively with SNS usage. Also Facebook addiction was found in previous research to be more common among those who had lower self-esteem and social skills and who had a tendency to depression (e.g., Herrera Harfuch, Pacheco Murguía, Lever, & Andrade, 2010). Facebook addiction was also found to correlate positively with neuroticism and extraversion and negatively with conscientiousness (Andreassen, Torsheim, Brunborg, & Pallesen, 2012).

Considering the likeness between Internet and Facebook addiction in terms of some determinants, we decided to examine the same predictors and their relation to these two types of addiction. To achieve this goal, we focused only on personality traits and positive orientation. These factors were chosen on the basis of the literature, which shows significant associations between personality, self-esteem, satisfaction with life, and Internet and Facebook addiction. We referred to the positive orientation construct, which comprises three self-belief dimensions: self-esteem, optimism, and satisfaction with life (Heikamp et al., 2014). Self-beliefs are well-established predictors of future behaviors in the fields of health (e.g., Schwarzer, & Renner, 2000), education (Bong, Cho, Ahn, & Kim, 2012), or work (Cunningham, Bruening, Sartore, Sagas, & Fink, 2005). To our best knowledge, this is the first study where the construct of positive orientation is used in the context of the Internet. The term “positive orientation” is understood to mean positive perception of oneself, positive evaluation of one's life, and expecting positive things in the future. As previous research shows, positive orientation is a key factor in better adjustment (Alessandri, Caprara, & Tisak, 2012), more efficient coping with difficulties and making up with losses more quickly (Caprara et al., 2009). Cross-cultural and longitudinal studies proved the generality of this construct (Alessandri et al., 2012) (Caprara, Steca, Alessandri, Abela, & McWhinnie, 2010).

The paper comprises two studies aiming to examine whether Internet addiction and Facebook addiction are associated with positive orientation and personality traits. In both studies, widely used methods for assessing Internet and Facebook addiction scales were applied. Both had been adapted into Polish and used satisfactorily in many studies. The scales measuring positive orientation (Caprara et al., 2010) and personality (Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann, 2003) were selected on the basis of their common use in different cultures and the low number of items. This is extremely important in online studies in order to achieve good reliabilities (Gosling, Vazire, Srivastava, & John, 2004).

On the basis of the literature, we formulated the following hypotheses for Study 1:

Hypothesis 1

Internet addiction will be related to lower positive orientation.

Hypothesis 2

Internet addiction will be related to higher extraversion and neuroticism and to lower conscientiousness.