| Personality is a popular and long studied research topic in both the popular and scholarly media. Questions of how personality is shaped by culture and how personality influences behaviors are the traditional premise of psychologists (McCrae & Costa, 1997). This study focuses on how personality relates to communication in the age of technology and the advent of digital communication devices through a social cultural lens. The study also examines how ethnicity and religion might further assist in explaining personality and communication behaviors. This study used archival data to examine digital communication (blogs, cell phone, chat room, email, social networks, instant messaging, listserv, web page, and text messaging) in an African American population. Study participants were African American college students attending a southern United States community college or an eastern United States university. The MMPI-2, a demographic survey, and a communication questionnaire were administered to assess personality characteristics, choice in electronic communication device, and hours of use. Themes emerged. Study participants that preferred communication by text messaging endorse items associated with anxiety, fears, and low self-esteem. Large amounts of time spent on social networking sites resulted in higher endorsement of feelings of low self-esteem and feelings of disconnection from reality. Study participants that spent more time instant messaging were more likely to endorse odd behavior, peculiar perceptions, and experience general disconnection from reality. Attending religious services resulted in lower levels of perceptual disturbances, health concerns, negative emotions, introversion, and less time spent on the Internet. Results from this study supported previous literature with notably increased mean Restructured Clinical Scales and Psychopathology Five T-scores for study participants over the published norms for these scales. Study results emphasize the need to continue to examine the link between personality and communication while accounting for psychosocial variables such as culture and religion.;KEY WORDS: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2), Restructured Clinical (RC) Scales, Psychopathology Five, Hypochondriasis, Depression, Psychopathic Deviate, Paranoia, Schizophrenia, Hypomania, Social Introversion, Fears, Health Concerns, Cynicism, Low Self-Esteem, Social Discomfort, Family Problems, Introversion, Disconstraint, Aggressiveness, Negative Emotionality, Psychoticism, FRS, DEP, HEA, CYN, LSE, SOD, FAM, Psychometrics, Archival Data, Psychology, Personality, MMPI, MMPI-2, RC, PSY-5, INTR, DISC, AGGR, NEGE, PSYC, Norms, African American, African-American, Black, Culture, Cross-cultural, Digital Divide, Internet, Online, Social Network, Email, E-mail, Chat room, Cell phone, Blogging, Instant Messaging, Text Messaging, Web Page, Listserv, Facebook, MySpace, Introversion, Religion, Religiosity, Baptist, Denomination, Attendance, Communication, Digital, Communication Device, Face-to-face, Virtual. |
