Who is to be gaining more on Facebook? The interplay among individualism, self-consciousness, creative styles, use of Facebook, and social capital

Now we are in the era of Facebook (FB). As we can see from its deep penetration to our social life and wide coverage of users, the profound influence of FB worth concern to see how it might bring benefits to the users. The present study aimed at investigating the relationships among the use of FB, different dimensions of self-consciousness, different types of social capitals, and different creative cognitive styles in participants from individualistic or collectivistic cultures, with the help of 218 participants contributing valid data (86 males, 132 females; 40 from individualistic culture and 178 from collective culture). It was found that general FB use had significant influence to bridging social capital but not for bonding social capital. The breakdown analyses of FB intensity and Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory have helped us scrutinizing to the grand picture: Intensive use of FB was correlated positively with public self-consciousness; individuals with higher public self-consciousness also scored higher in social browsing and status update; the creative style of originality, joining groups, attitude towards FB, number of friends in FB were significant predictors of bridging social capital after controlling for age, gender, and cultural background. On the other hand, the creative style of efficiency was the only significant predictor of bonding social capital after controlling for the same group of variables. The result of the current study suggested that to give a more meaningful discussion, we have to put our focus not only on the general os usage of FB but also looking at the specific usage patterns of the users.