What Makes Bloggers Write?

Posted by: Cathy Arnst on September 22

If there is an unanswered question out there, I guarantee you there is a researcher trying to answer it. In the Web 2.0 world, the big question is (paraphrasing Butch Cassidy): Who are those bloggers? Scientists from the University of Alabama came up with an answer by grouping bloggers into the Big Five personality inventory measures. According to the Big Five theory, widely used by psychologists, most people are a combination of five personality traits—extraversion, agreeableness, openness to new experience, conscientiousness and neuroticism. The results, reported in the journal Computers in Human Behavior: Bloggers are high in openness to new experience (good, good) and high in neuroticism (Oh no!).

It gets worse, as far as I’m concerned: Highly neurotic women are more likely to blog than women lower on the neurosis scale, whereas there was no such difference in men. They’ll blog even if they are cool as a cucumber. Neuroticism is defined in the Big Five as “the tendency to experience negative emotions, such as anger, anxiety, or depression. It is sometimes called emotional instability.”

That makes me kind of angry—though open to hearing other points of view. Seems to me there are just as many negative men, if not more, in the blogosphere as women. In fact, women bloggers,especially mom bloggers, are too often downright sunny, in my neurotic opinion. Well, I can be sunny too. As proof, I’m linking to this hilarious video, by a group of singing anesthesiologists (though you might find it rather negative if you are about to have an operation).

I learned about both the video and the study on a man’s blog, specifically Running A Hospital by Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess in Boston. He doesn’t seem very neurotic, I’ll have to admit, and his blog gives you an inside look at the issues facing one of the nation’s leading academic medical centers. Check it out.

I’m off to get my meds now.

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