Given the online forum of Facebook to create whatever public persona you’d like, it would seem logical that people might portray an idealized version of themselves—putting up their most attractive photos, editing down their thoughts to the most clever and pithy before posting them in a status update, carefully choosing favorite books and movies to portray a certain sophistication. Not so, say researchers from the University of Texas at Austin. Instead of using Facebook to create rose-tinted portraits of themselves, more often people’s Facebook profiles reflect their authentic personalities, with all of the quirks, funny faces and moodiness they entail.
