To share or not to share? The roles of false Facebook self, sex, and narcissism in re-posting self-image enhancing products

Drivers of sharing third-party advertisements (re-posting) for self-image enhancing products (e.g., a new iPhone) on social media are not fully understood. We posit that one key motivation to do so, is to build and maintain a false-self on social media that is more desirable and shelters the person from the vulnerable “true” self. That is, users who seek to build and maintain a false-self on social media will be more likely than others to re-post ads for self-image enhancing products. Extending this view through building on personality and evolutionary sex-differences theories, we suggest that this relationship is not homogenous, and specifically that narcissism and sex moderate this association. The proposed three-way moderation model is tested with hierarchical regression techniques applied to data from 246 Facebook users. Findings show that users high in false Facebook-self are more likely than others to re-post self-image enhancing commercial information, that narcissism levels increase this sharing behavior, and that this moderated effect is especially pronounced in male users. These findings extend the theoretical understating of re-posting behaviors and of consequences of having a false-self on social media. They are also informative for companies trying to generate organic word-of-mouth for self-image enhancing products.