Show me your friends and I will tell you what type of person you are: How one's profile, number of friends, and type of friends influence impression formation on social network sites

Abstract

This experiment examines how far extraversion of the target (self‐generated information), extraversion of the target's friends (friends‐generated information), and number of friends (system‐generated information) influence the perceived popularity, communal orientation, and social attractiveness of the target. The warranting principle states that judgments rely more heavily on other‐generated than self‐generated information because the former is more immune to manipulation. It is argued that the warranting principle becomes more important when more interpersonal traits have to be judged. In line with the expectations, other‐generated information had only weak impact on the popularity judgments. With regard to communal orientation, other‐generated information had stronger effects and qualified the effects of self‐generated information. Only other‐generated information had an impact on perceived social attraction.