Personality and positive psychology in social media and post-secondary education

Abstract

This study explores the relationship between personality type, academic background, and social media content. Ten participants from each of McMaster University’s seven undergraduate faculties completed a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment to determine their personality type. They submitted 10 personally-written status updates or comments from the social media platforms of Twitter or Facebook. The Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanation (CAVE) method was used to analyze 630 social media content to determine overall positive or negative explanatory style. Of the 630 submitted pieces social media content, 68.4% of them were found to describe positive events. 92.1% of the social media content contained an optimistic explanatory style. These findings suggest that social media is a largely positive medium for university students. ©Journal of Professional Communication, all rights reserved.