How Facebook Is Perceived and Used by People Across Cultures

Abstract

Facebook is a relatively new tool launched in 2004, and yet it is quickly attracting numerous people around the world. The current work examined not only how Facebook is perceived and used in independent and interdependent cultures but also how one would be subsequently influenced by the different usage of Facebook. In Study 1, we found that Korean participants had more relational/interdependent beliefs about Facebook than did American participants. Furthermore, Study 2 showed cultural differences in actual activities on Facebook, such that relational/interdependent activities on Facebook were more prevalent in Eastern than in Western cultures. Importantly, in Study 3, we found that experimentally induced interdependent usage of Facebook led to more relational reasoning. Taken together, our findings suggest that people would use Facebook in culturally appropriate ways, and further, Facebook might function as a mechanism to maintain or reinforce cultural differences in psychological processes.