College Students' Impression Management And Self Consistency And Congruence In Social Network Site Usage

With the increasing popularization of Internet, the number of net citizens in China keeps rapid growth. In recent years, as a rising network service, social network site is regarded as a striking phenomenon. Social network site, born in the United States, is based on the users'social network, which is transformed from real form into virtual form and creates a new kind of interpersonal relationship pattern. The amazing speed of the enlargement of social network site has attracted general attention and interests of network service suppliers both in national and international scale. Meanwhile social network site plays more and more important role in users'life.Selecting college students as sample, this series of researches is aimed to explore the relation between the using of social network site and self development, through questionnaire and scene imitation method. Impression management and self consistency and congruence are chosen as the points of penetration to study this relation. Impression management is the process in which people try to control the presentation of self information through interpersonal interaction and self manifesting so as to affect the impression of himself in others'mind and promote self-construction. Self consistency and congruence is the interaction and conformity between oneself and his experiences and among different parts of selfs in order to form the sense of integrity and harmony. The unique techniques of social network site provide an ideal platform and rich resources for impression management so that users can show an individual image effectively to his social network. Impression management offers opportunities to review and consolidate the information of self, pushing self consistency and congruence. The meanings of this series of researches is: 1)to explore the social behavior and self development in internet using from the perspective of impression management and self consistency and congruence, which enriches related academic domains; 2) to give the psychological views for the survival and development of social network site, reflecting the role of psychology in driving increment of internet service and positive usage of internet.In the researches, several questionnaires and two scene imitations were used. Date collected from 736 college students was analyzed with the help of SPSS14.0. The findings of the researches are: 1) the anonymity in social network usage is weakening; 2) the ease of impression management effect control and Feed pattern can increase the possibility to use social network site; 3) there are two kinds of online impression management orientations, self-oriented and others-oriented; 4) self-oriented impression management orientation can enhance the frequency of social network site usage and impression management related operation; 5) there exists positive correlation between self-oriented impression management and self consistency and congruence; 6) using social network site will activate ideal self, real self and actual self and shorten the distance between ideal self and actual self.The findings of this series of researches show that social network site provides a positive and healthy arena for impression management. Self-oriented impression management orientation in social network site usage will help to advance self consistency and congruence.