Do Altruistic Individuals “Share” More Contents on Social Media?

The power of video contents to “go viral” has sparked much interest in managerial and academic circles. Despite the prevalence of the “Share” function in almost all online social network services and its important implications in viral marketing, the psychological processes and motivational factors underlying the behavior of “sharing” contents on social media have been understudied. Word-of-mouth literature shows that altruism is a viable predictor of sharing information in consumer contexts (Sundaram et al. 1998), but it is unclear whether altruistic individuals would share more contents on social media. Purely altruistic acts typically incur a significant “cost” to the benefactor, but sharing on social media requires minimal costs while exposing the self to the scrutiny of many others. Thus, even if altruism increases sharing on social media as in other word-of-mouth contexts, the primary motive is more likely to be self-oriented (Berger 2014) than other-focused (Dichter 1966). Indeed, Baumeister (1982) theorizes that the self-presentational motive of gaining favorable evaluations from others often accounts for altruism and that heightening such concern will promote prosocial behaviors. Yet, this relationship has not been directly tested. In this research, we examine the relationship between altruism and self-presentation motives in the context of sharing contents on social media. We propose that self-presentation concerns lead altruistic individuals to share more contents on social media, because they view sharing as a means to gain favorable evaluation from others. As suggested by Bausmeister (1982), we expect that altruistic individuals will be motivated to gain favorable evaluations from others, and share contents to reap positive rewards of feeling good about the self.