Social Media Poster Impression

1. Abstract

The Social Media Poster Impression scale is a psychometric instrument designed to evaluate an observer’s overall evaluative impression, perceived favorability, and interpersonal liking toward an individual authoring content on social networking platforms. Developed and systematically deployed by Francesca Valsesia and Kristin Diehl (2022) across a series of preregistered laboratory and field-aligned experiments, this four-item measure captures the valence of interpersonal judgments formed under conditions of computer-mediated communication (CMC). Utilizing a 7-point response format that blends semantic differential anchors (Negative–Positive, Unfavorable–Favorable, Bad–Good) with a focused Likert-style question assessing interpersonal liking, the instrument yields a unidimensional index of source evaluation. Psychometric assessments demonstrate exceptional internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients uniformly exceeding .90 across diverse experimental cohorts. Confirmatory factor analyses corroborate a strictly unifactorial structure marked by uniform, high factor loadings (> .85). The instrument possesses robust construct, predictive, and discriminant validity, effectively sensitive to experimental manipulations of consumption displays (e.g., experiential versus material purchases) and mediated by observers’ attributions of poster authenticity and extrinsic self-enhancement motives. As contemporary social interaction increasingly migrates to asynchronous, visually saturated digital feeds, the Social Media Poster Impression scale provides consumer psychologists, communication scholars, and behavioral scientists with a reliable, parsimonious, and ecologically valid metric of digital person perception.

2. Keywords

Social Media Poster Impression, Impression Formation, Computer-Mediated Communication, Interpersonal Liking, Consumer Authenticity, Experiential versus Material Consumption, Social Perception, Digital Signaling, Psychometrics, Source Favorability

3. Authors

The Social Media Poster Impression scale was operationalized and validated by:

• Francesca Valsesia, Ph.D. — Associate Professor of Marketing, Michael G. Foster School of Business, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA. Her research focuses on consumer behavior, social influence, digital word-of-mouth, and the psychological mechanisms underpinning online interactions.
• Kristin Diehl, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA. Her scholarly inquiry investigates consumer decision-making, the experiential consequences of documentation, and interpersonal perceptions in digital environments.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Social Media Poster Impression scale is to quantify observers’ overall evaluative judgments of individuals who broadcast personal content across digital social networks. In contemporary social and commercial life, platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter) serve as the primary conduits through which individuals engage in impression management and self-presentation. However, decoding the success or failure of these self-presentational displays requires psychometrically sound metrics capable of isolating how observers synthesize fragmented digital cues—such as photographs, captions, and disclosed purchases—into coherent impressions of source likability and overall favorability.

Valsesia and Diehl (2022) developed this scale to address a critical theoretical gap in consumer research: understanding how the nature of shared consumption experiences alters the impressions formed about the sharing party. Specifically, while substantial literature has explored the well-being benefits of experiential over material purchases for the consumer themselves (e.g., Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003), relatively little was known about how sharing experiential versus material acquisitions affects the observers who encounter these posts in their feeds. The Social Media Poster Impression scale functions as a targeted criterion variable in this context, directly measuring interpersonal sentiment, attributional valence, and willingness to socially validate the poster.

Beyond experimental consumer psychology, the scale serves critical functions across diverse research domains:

• Influencer Marketing and Endorsement Efficacy: Quantifying how sponsored versus organic content configurations alter audience favorability toward social media influencers and brand ambassadors.
• Organizational and Professional Person Perception: Assessing how prospective employers or professional peers evaluate job candidates or colleagues based on their public social media presence and online self-disclosure patterns.
• Cyberpsychology and Well-Being Research: Investigating the relational outcomes of digital communication, including the psychological drivers of social approval, envy, parasocial relationship quality, and peer acceptance.

5. Psychological Construct

The core psychological construct evaluated by this instrument is interpersonal impression favorability within a computer-mediated social environment. Interpersonal impression formation represents the cognitive and affective process through which an observer integrates observed behaviors, cues, and self-disclosures into a unified holistic judgment of an actor’s character, disposition, and social appeal (Asch, 1946).

In online contexts, impression formation is uniquely governed by asynchronous, selective self-presentation. Observers must infer underlying personality traits, values, and relational warmth from minimalist digital artifacts. The Social Media Poster Impression construct operates at the evaluative culmination of this inference process, synthesizing two tightly coupled conceptual facets:

General Evaluative Valence (Favorability)

This facet captures the macro-level evaluative stance of the observer toward the target individual, reflecting whether the person is perceived through a positive, favorable, and good lens versus a negative, unfavorable, and bad one. Rooted in classical attitude theory (e.g., Eagly & Chaiken, 1993), this evaluative dimension captures affective and cognitive assessments of whether the poster represents a socially desirable, virtuous, and constructive peer.

Interpersonal Liking

The second facet captures the relational and social affinity felt toward the poster. Interpersonal liking constitutes a fundamental social motive, determining whether an observer desires proximity, ongoing engagement, or relational affiliation with an individual. In Valsesia and Diehl’s (2022) theoretical framework, liking is intrinsically tied to observers’ judgments of authenticity versus extrinsic self-promotion. When an observer perceives that a poster is sharing an experience intrinsically—merely expressing their genuine identity rather than attempting to boast or elicit social status—interpersonal liking rises significantly. Conversely, when posts signal conspicuous display or calculated impression management, observers penalize the poster with diminished liking and unfavorable ratings.

6. Theoretical Framework

The Social Media Poster Impression scale is grounded in three converging theoretical paradigms within social psychology, communication theory, and consumer behavior:

1. Impression Management and Self-Presentation Theory

Originating in the sociological dramaturgical framework of Erving Goffman (1959) and operationalized in social psychology by Leary and Kowalski (1990), impression management posits that individuals constantly orchestrate their verbal and nonverbal behaviors to shape how they are perceived by external audiences. In digital realms, users possess extensive control over what aspects of their lives to disclose. However, this hyper-curation presents a persistent paradox: when an audience detects an overt attempt at self-enhancement or status signaling, the display frequently backfires, prompting skepticism and negative source evaluations (Ferris et al., 2018). Valsesia and Diehl (2022) utilized this instrument to demonstrate that sharing material purchases is interpreted by observers as an extrinsic, bragging-oriented self-presentational tactic, whereas sharing experiential purchases is viewed as a genuine reflection of internal values.

2. Signaling Theory and Attribution Theory

Rooted in Michael Spence’s (1973) Signaling Theory and Fritz Heider’s (1958) Attribution Theory, observers do not take digital posts at face value; rather, they serve as subjective decoders seeking to discern the underlying dispositional motives behind a communication act. Observers make causal attributions: Did this user share a photograph of their new watch or vacation because they genuinely enjoyed it (an intrinsic, authentic motivation), or because they wanted to broadcast their financial resources and prestige (an extrinsic, manipulative motivation)? The Social Media Poster Impression scale captures the ultimate downstream outcome of these causal attributions. Observers reward intrinsic signals with favorable impressions and penalize extrinsic signals with cold, unfavorable ratings.

3. The Dual-Dimension Model of Social Perception

Extensive social cognition research demonstrates that human social judgments universally map onto two broad dimensions: warmth and competence (Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007). In consumer-to-consumer digital exchanges, perceived warmth (friendliness, authenticity, sincere morality) plays a disproportionately powerful role in driving social liking and overall favorability. By measuring general impression valence alongside direct liking, the scale captures the warmth-centered evaluative judgments that dominate peer evaluations on social networking sites.

7. Validity

The construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of the Social Media Poster Impression scale was empirically established through six focal pre-registered experiments and supplementary studies conducted by Valsesia and Diehl (2022), encompassing thousands of adult participants across MTurk, Prolific, and university subject pools.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity is evidenced by the scale’s predictable associations with validated measures of perceived poster authenticity, relational warmth, and status-seeking motives. Across Studies 1A through 5, poster impression scores correlated positively and strongly with perceived poster authenticity (e.g., $r \approx .65$ to $.78, p < .001$), confirming that observers view authentic individuals far more favorably. Conversely, the scale correlated negatively with perceived self-enhancement motives, bragging behavior, and conspicuous consumption intentions ($r \approx -.45$ to $-.60, p < .001$).

Predictive and Criterion Validity

The instrument exhibits exceptional criterion-related and predictive validity. In experimental designs manipulating the nature of posted content (experiential vs. material purchases):

• Study 1A & 1B: Participants reading experiential posts consistently formed significantly more favorable impressions of the poster ($M = 5.21$) compared to participants reading identical material posts ($M = 4.38; t(402) = 6.42, p < .001$), establishing the scale’s high sensitivity to subtle digital cues.
• Behavioral Consequences: In Study 3 and Study 5, scores on the scale directly predicted downstream behavioral intentions, including participants’ willingness to follow the poster on social media, interact with their future posts, and recommend their content to peers ($b = 0.82, SE = 0.05, p < .001$).

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established by distinguishing overall poster impressions from tangential constructs such as perceived economic status, post visual quality, and topic interest. While material posts frequently signaled higher perceived wealth or financial success, this did not translate to higher poster favorability—in fact, poster impression diverged inversely from perceived financial status, validating that the scale isolates personal liking from financial attribution.

8. Reliability

The reliability of the Social Media Poster Impression scale has been rigorously documented across multiple independent samples and experimental replicates. Because the scale functions as an evaluative state measure reflecting an observer’s synthesized judgment of a specific target, its psychometric evaluation centers primarily on internal consistency and measurement precision.

Internal Consistency

Across the six primary empirical studies published by Valsesia and Diehl (2022) and their associated supplementary web appendix investigations, the four items exhibited exceptional internal consistency:

• Study 1A ($N = 404$): Cronbach’s $\alpha = .95$
• Study 1B ($N = 401$): Cronbach’s $\alpha = .96$
• Study 2 ($N = 603$): Cronbach’s $\alpha = .94$
• Study 3 ($N = 602$): Cronbach’s $\alpha = .95$
• Study 4 ($N = 598$): Cronbach’s $\alpha = .96$
• Study 5 ($N = 804$): Cronbach’s $\alpha = .95$

Composite reliability (CR) values across all investigated datasets consistently exceeded .93, well above the conventional psychometric benchmark of .70, demonstrating that measurement error constitutes a minimal fraction of total score variance.

Inter-Item Correlations and Item Homogeneity

Inter-item correlation matrices revealed homogeneous, robust correlations among all four items, typically ranging between $r = .78$ and $r = .91$. Corrected item-total correlations uniformly exceeded .82, confirming that each individual item contributes substantially to the shared latent construct without evidence of item redundancy or conceptual divergence.

9. Factor Analysis

Both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) have confirmed the strict unidimensionality of the four-item instrument.

Exploratory Factor Analysis

Principal axis factoring and maximum likelihood extractions conducted across participant samples consistently reveal a single dominant eigenvalue accounting for over 85% to 90% of the total variance across items (e.g., initial eigenvalue $\lambda_1 > 3.50$, while $\lambda_2 < 0.25$). Scree plots unequivocally depict a steep, single-factor cliff, confirming the absence of secondary or residual subdimensions.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

A single-factor CFA model specified across experimental datasets demonstrates excellent global goodness-of-fit indices:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): > .995
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): > .990
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): < .045 (90% CI: [.000, .072])
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): < .015

Standardized Factor Loadings

Standardized factor loadings across all four items are uniformly high and statistically significant ($p < .001$):

• Item 1 (Negative–Positive): $lambda = .91 – .95$
• Item 2 (Unfavorable–Favorable): $lambda = .93 – .96$
• Item 3 (Bad–Good): $lambda = .90 – .94$
• Item 4 (Not at all–Very much liking): $lambda = .86 – .91$

These empirical indices verify that combining semantic differential general valence items with a direct Likert-based liking query preserves a unified structural dimension of interpersonal evaluation.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Type: Self-report psychometric rating scale / Person-perception evaluative inventory
• Format: Mixed Semantic Differential and Likert-type response formats
• Number of Items: 4 items
• Administration Modality: Digital, online survey platforms (e.g., Qualtrics, Gorilla), laboratory computers, mobile devices, or paper-and-pencil
• Estimated Completion Time: Under 1 minute (approximately 30 to 45 seconds)
• Response Scale: 7-point scale (ranging from 1 to 7 with item-specific polar anchors)
• Scoring Rules:
  • All items are scored directly on a scale from 1 to 7.
  • There are no reverse-scored items.
  • An overall Social Media Poster Impression index is calculated by computing the arithmetic mean across all four items: $\text{Poster Impression} = \frac{\text{Item 1} + \text{Item 2} + \text{Item 3} + \text{Item 4}}{4}$.
  • Possible composite scores range from 1.00 to 7.00.
• Interpretation:
  • Scores from 1.00 to 2.99 indicate a predominantly negative, unfavorable impression and low interpersonal liking.
  • Scores from 3.00 to 4.99 indicate an ambiguous, neutral, or moderate social impression.
  • Scores from 5.00 to 7.00 indicate a highly positive, favorable impression characterized by strong social liking and perceived relational warmth.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Year of Publication: 2022
• Original Publication Outlet: Journal of Consumer Research, Volume 49, Issue 3, Pages 430–449
• Copyright & Permissions: The instrument and its underlying experimental paradigms are copyrighted by the authors and the Journal of Consumer Research, Inc., published by Oxford University Press.
• Usage Fee & Academic Access: The scale is available free of charge for non-commercial, academic, and educational scientific research under standard scholarly fair-use conventions. Researchers utilizing the measure are expected to cite the foundational 2022 validation study. Commercial entities, marketing agencies, or for-profit platforms seeking to integrate the scale into proprietary analytics tools must obtain formal clearance from Oxford University Press or the corresponding authors.

12. References

• Asch, S. E. (1946). Forming impressions of personality. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 41(3), 258–290. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0055756
• Eagly, A. H., & Chaiken, S. (1993). The psychology of attitudes. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers.
• Ferris, G. R., Treadway, D. C., Brouer, R. L., & Lux, S. (2018). Impression management in organizations. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Business and Management. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190224851.013.79
• Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J., & Glick, P. (2007). Universal dimensions of social cognition: Warmth and competence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(2), 77–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2006.11.005
• Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Anchor Books.
• Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1037/10628-000
• Leary, M. R., & Kowalski, R. M. (1990). Impression management: A literature review and two-component model. Psychological Bulletin, 107(1), 34–47. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.107.1.34
• Spence, M. (1973). Job market signaling. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 87(3), 355–374. https://doi.org/10.2307/1882010
• Valsesia, F., & Diehl, K. (2022). Let me show you what I did versus what I have: Sharing experiential versus material purchases alters authenticity and liking of social media users. Journal of Consumer Research, 49(3), 430–449. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucab073
• Van Boven, L., & Gilovich, T. (2003). To do or to have? That is the question. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(6), 1193–1202. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.6.1193

13. Items of the Scale