Effects of secondary sources on impression of primary and secondary sources in Twitter

Abstract

Spontaneous Trait Transference (STT) occurs when communicators are perceived as possessing the traits they describe in others. With an increasing use of social media, taking a closer look at impression formation processes in an online context becomes paramount. As functions on social media allow more sources to be associated with a message, it is vital to look at the secondary source in STT on social media and its implications on image management. This study looks at the effects of the presence of a secondary source on STT. A 2 (trait: with vs. without) x 2 (secondary source: with vs. without) experiment was conducted. A total of 136 participants, aged 18 to 40, took part in an experiment where they rated their impressions of primary and secondary sources after reading stimuli presented in the form of a Twitter feed. The stimuli contained non trait-implying behaviour descriptions as well as trait-implying descriptions, the latter of which containing tweets that express intelligence, politeness, impatience, and laziness. Results showed that STT is weakened in the presence of a secondary source, and that STT to the secondary source is weaker than STT to the primary source. In addition, perceived salience measures also indicated that the primary source was more salient than the secondary source, bringing new insight to our understanding of the phenomenon.