Research On The Relationship Between Personality Traits, Communication Motives And Online Rumors

The emergence and prosperity of the Internet has brought great convenience for information flow,the establishment and development of WeChat,QQ,Weibo and other social software also accelerated the dissemination of information.In this environment,a variety of Internet information which may or may not be true was quickly copied,pasted and forwarded,everyone has the potential to act as a second communicator of Internet rumors,which led to a very bad influence on society.There were a lot of study on the Internet rumors,but lacked suitable questionnaire of Internet rumors spreading motivation,and the research on the relationship between network rumor spreading behavior and personality traits and communication motivation was very few.Therefore,The analysis of the relationship between personality traits,communication motivation and Internet rumors is a valuable research topic in this field.Besides,it will offer the psychological reference for the government,enterprises and other relevant departments to deal with Internet rumors and design programs to control the rumors.Starting from a perspective in psychology,the paper made a summary of the domestic and foreign study,and aimed to investigate the relationship between network rumor spreading behavior and personality traits and communication motivation.This research draws 536 samples from college students,the relationship between network rumor spreading behavior and personality traits and communication motivation was discussed by the Internet rumor spreading behavior questionnaire and self-compiled questionnaire of Internet rumor spreading motivation and Chinese Big Five Personality Inventory brief version.Main contributions of this work are as follows:(1)The final formal questionnaire has 13 items.The questionnaire included of total four dimensions:altruistic,self-enhancement,social communication,emotional release.The reliability was 0.879,and the correlation between each dimension and total score was 0.415-0.791.(2)Nervousness,agreeableness and the network rumor spreading behavior is related,it has the forecast function.Altruistic motivation and emotional release have a predictive effect on the behavior of Internet rumors,it also has the forecast function.There exists a significant positive correlation between nervousness and emotional release,There exists a significant negative correlation between conscientiousness and emotional release,openness has a significant positive correlation with social communication,extraversion and self-enhancement,altruistic,social communication were significantly positively correlated.(3)Nervousness have a direct impact on the behavior of Internet rumors,it is also have an indirect effect on the transmission behavior through emotional release.The results of this thesis are as follows:(1)The questionnaire has good reliability and validity,which met the surveying requirement,and can be used to measure the motivation of Internet rumors for College Students;(2)The Internet rumors spreading behavior of University Students was affected by personality traits and communication motivation.(3)The personality traits affected on the network rumor spreading behavior of university students by the communication motivation.