Information Disclosure and Privacy Paradox: The Role of Impulsivity

Self-disclosure of personal information is generally accepted as a security risk. Nonetheless, many individuals who are concerned about their privacy will often voluntarily reveal information to others. This inconsistency between individuals' expressed privacy concern and the willingness to divulge personal information is referred to as privacy paradox. Several arguments have been proposed to explain the inconsistency. One set of arguments centers around the possible effects of differences in personality characteristics, such as the Big Five factors. In the current article, we examine the role of one personality characteristic, impulsivity, in explaining the relationship between privacy concern and information disclosure. We report the results of a survey-based study that consisted of two hundred and forty-two (242) usable responses from subjects recruited on Amazon Mechanical Turk. The results show that one of the three dimensions of impulsivity, motor impulsivity, directly influences the extent of information disclosure and also moderates the relationship between privacy concern and information disclosure. Furthermore, our study shows impulsivity explains more variance in information disclosure than explained by the Big Five factors only.