Personality Profiles of Users Sharing Animal-related Content on Social Media

• Published in: Anthrozoös 2017-10, Vol.30 (4), p.671-680
• Main Authors: Hagan, Courtney, Carpenter, Jordan, Ungar, Lyle, Preotiuc-Pietro, Daniel
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Big Five; cat people; dog people; Facebook; social media; Twitter
• ISSN: 0892-7936; 1753-0377
• DOI: 10.1080/08927936.2017.1370235

Animal preferences are thought to be linked with more salient psychological traits of people, and most research examining owner personality as a differentiating factor has obtained mixed results. The rise in usage of social networks offers users a new medium in which they can broadcast their preferences and activities, including about animals. In two studies, the first on Facebook status updates and the second on images shared on Twitter, we revisited the link between Big Five personality traits and animal preference, specifically focusing on cats and dogs. We used automatic content analysis of text and images to unobtrusively measure preference for animals online using large datasets. In study 1, a dataset of Facebook status updates (n = 72,559) were analyzed and it was found that those who mentioned ownership of a cat (by using the phrase "my cat" (n = 5,053)) in their status updates were more open to experience, introverted, neurotic, and less conscientious when compared with the general population. Users mentioning ownership of a dog (by using "my dog" (n = 8,045)) were only less conscientious compared with the rest of the population. In study 2, a dataset of Twitter images was analyzed and revealed that users who featured either cat (n = 1,036) or dog (n = 1,499) images in their tweets were more neurotic, less conscientious, and less agreeable than those who did not. In addition, posting images containing cats was specific to users higher in openness, while posting images featuring dogs was associated with users higher in extraversion. These findings taken together align with some previous findings on the relationship between owner personality and animal preference, additionally highlighting some social media-specific behaviors.