The psychology of facebook

With over a billion users, Facebook is changing the social life of our species. Cultural commentators ponder the effects. Is it bringing us together or tearing us apart? Psychologists have responded too - Google Scholar lists more than 27,000 references with Facebook in the title. Common topics for study are links between Facebook use and personality, and whether the network alleviates or fosters loneliness. The torrent of new data is overwhelming and much of it appears contradictory. Here is the psychology of Facebook, digested:

Who uses Facebook?

Extraverts have more friends on FB
but shy people probably use it more

According to a survey of over a thousand people, "females, younger people, and those not currently in a committed relationship were the most active Facebook users". Regarding personality, a study of over 1000 Australians reported that "[FB] users tend to be more extraverted and narcissistic, but less conscientious and socially lonely, than nonusers". A study of the actual FB use of over a hundred students found that personality was a more important factor than gender and FB experience, with high scorers in neuroticism spending more time on FB. Meanwhile, extraverts were found to have more friends on the network than introverts ("the 10 per cent of our respondents scoring the highest in extraversion had, on average, 484 more friends than the 10 per cent scoring the lowest in extraversion").

Other findings add to the picture, for example: greater shyness has also been linked with more FB use. Similarly, a study from 2013 found that anxiousness (as well as alcohol and marijuana use) predicted more emotional attachment to Facebook.

There's also evidence that people use FB to connect with others with specialist interests, such as diabetes patients sharing information and experiences, and that people with autism particularly enjoy interacting via FB and other online networks.

Why do some people use Twitter and others Facebook?

High scorers in "need for cognition" prefer Twitter

Apparently most people use Facebook "to get instant communication and connection with their friends" (who knew?), but why use FB rather than Twitter? A 2014 paper suggested narcissism again is relevant, but that its influence depends on a person's age: student narcissists prefer Twitter, while more mature narcissists prefer FB. Other research has uncovered intriguing links between personality and reasons for using FB. People who said they used FB as an informational tool (rather than socialising) tended to score higher on neuroticism, sociability, extraversion and openness, but lower on conscientiousness and "need for cognition". The researchers speculated that using FB to seek and share information could be some people's way to avoid more cognitively demanding sources such as journal articles and newspaper reports. The same study also found that higher scorers in sociability, neuroticism and extraversion preferred FB, while people who scored higher in "need for cognition" preferred Twitter.

What do we give away about ourselves on Facebook?

FB seems like the perfect way to present an idealised version of yourself to the world. However an analysis of the profiles of over 200 people in Germany and the US found that they reflected their actual personalities, not their ideal selves. Consistent with this, another study found that people who are rated as more likeable in the flesh also tend to be rated as more likeable based on their Facebook page. The things you choose to "like" on FB are also revealing. Remarkably, a study out last week found that your "likes" can be analysed by a computer programme to produce a more accurate profile of your personality than the profiles produced by your friends and relatives.

If our FB profiles expose our true selves, this raises obvious privacy issues. A study in 2013 warned that employers often trawl candidates' FB pages, and that they view photos of drinking and partying as "red flags", presumably seeing them as a sign of low conscientiousness (in fact the study found photos like these were linked with high extraversion, not with low conscientiousness).

Other researchers have looked specifically at how personality is related to the kind of content people post on FB. A 2014 study reported that "higher degrees of narcissism led to deeper self-disclosures and more self-promotional content within these messages. [And] Users with higher need to belong disclosed more intimate information". Another study last year also reported that lonelier people disclose more private information, but fewer opinions.

You might also want to consider the friends you keep on FB - research suggests that their attractiveness (good-lookers give your rep a boost), and the statements they make about you on your wall, affect the way your own profile is perceived. Consider too how many friends you have - somewhat paradoxically, research finds that having an overabundance of friends leads to negative perceptions of your profile.

Finally, we heard about employers frowning on partying photos, but what else do you give away in your FB profile picture? It could reveal your cultural background according to a 2012 study that showed people from Taiwan were more likely to have a zoomed-out picture in which they were seen against a background context, while US users were more likely to have a close-up picture in which their face filled up more of the frame. Your FB pic might also say something about your current romantic relationship. When people feel more insecure about their partner's feelings, they make their relationship more visible in their pics.

In case you're wondering, yes, people who post more selfies probably are more narcissistic.

Is Facebook making us lonely and sad?

This is the crunch question that has probably attracted the most newspaper column inches (and books). A 2012 study took an experimental approach. One group were asked to post more updates than usual for one week - this led them to feel less lonely and more connected to their friends. Similarly, a survey of over a thousand FB users found links between use of the network and greater feelings of belonging and confidence in keeping up with friends, especially for people with low self-esteem. Another study from 2010 found that shy students who use FB feel closer to their friends (on FB) and have a greater sense of social support. A similar story is told by a 2013 paper that said feelings of FB connectedness were associated with "with lower depression and anxiety and greater satisfaction with life" and that Facebook "may act as a separate social medium ....  with a range of positive psychological outcomes." This recent report also suggested the site can help revive old relationships.

Yet there's also evidence for the negative influence of FB. A 2013 study texted people through the day, to see how they felt before and after using FB. "The more people used Facebook at one time point, the worse they felt the next time we text-messaged them; [and] the more they used Facebook over two-weeks, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time," the researchers said.

Other findings are more nuanced. This study from 2010 (not specifically focused on FB) found that using the internet to connect with existing friends was associated with less loneliness, but using it to connect with strangers (i.e. people only known online) was associated with more loneliness. This survey of adults with autism found that greater use of online social networking (including FB) was associated with having more close friendships, but only offline relationships were linked with feeling less lonely.

Facebook could also be fuelling envy. In 2012 researchers found that people who'd spent more time on FB felt that other people were happier, and that life was less fair. Similarly, a study of hundreds of undergrads found that more time on FB went hand in hand with more feelings of jealousy. And a paper from last year concluded that "people feel depressed after spending a great deal of time on Facebook because they feel badly when comparing themselves to others." However, this new report (on general online social networking, not just FB) found that heavy users are not more stressed than average, but are more aware of other people's stress.

Is Facebook harming students' academic work?

This is another live issue among newspaper columnists and other social commentators. An analysis of the grades and FB use of nearly 4000 US students found that the more they used the network to socialise, the poorer their grades tended to be (of course, there could be a separate causal factor(s) underlying this association). But not all FB use is the same - the study found that using the site to collect and share information was actually associated with better grades. This survey of over 200 students also found that heavier users of FB tend to have lower academic grades, but note again that this doesn't prove a causal link. Yet another study, this one from the University of Chicago, which included more convincing longitudinal data, found no evidence for a link between FB use and poorer grades; if anything there were signs of the opposite pattern. Still more positive evidence for FB came from a recent report that suggested FB - along with other social networking tools - could have cognitive benefits for elderly people.

And finally, some miscellaneous findings

• These are the unwritten rules of Facebook, according to focus groups with students.
• Viewing your own FB profile boosts self-esteem.
• Emotions are contagious on Facebook (this is the recent study that caused controversy because users' feeds were manipulated without them knowing). 
• Surprise! Both male and female subjects are more willing to initiate friendships with opposite-sex profile owners with attractive photos.
• People publish posts on FB that they later regret for various reasons, including posting when they're in an emotional state or misunderstanding their online social circles. 
• Who needs cheap thrills or meditation? Apparently, looking at your FB account is different, physiologically speaking, from stress or relaxation. It provokes what these researchers describe appealingly as a "core flow state", characterised by positive mood and high arousal. 

That was our digest of the psychology of Facebook - please tell all your friends, on and off Facebook! Oh, and don't forget to visit the Research Digest Facebook page.
_________________________________
   
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

New reason why quitting smoking is so difficult

When a cigarette smoker attempts to quit, not only do they crave their usual nicotine hit, they also experience an unpleasant inability to enjoy other pleasures in life - a state known as "anhedonia".

Jessica Cook and her colleagues studied over a thousand smokers enrolled on a quitting programme in the US. The participants (mostly White, 58.3 per cent were female) were placed on a range of nicotine replacement therapies or they were given placebo. The participants also kept an evening diary from five days before, to ten days after, their quit day. Here they recorded how much pleasure they'd experienced that day across three domains: social, recreation and performance/accomplishment.

The researchers found that stopping smoking was followed by an immediate spike in anhedonia - on the day of quitting, participants in the placebo condition showed a marked reduction in their experience of pleasure from various aspects of life. This quitting-related anhedonia peaked the day after quitting and showed all the hallmarks of being part of the nicotine "withdrawal syndrome". That is, levels of anhedonia tended to be correlated with other withdrawal symptoms (such as craving and poor concentration); the anhedonia faded over time; and it was eased by the administration of a nicotine therapy, such as a nicotine lozenge or patch.

Perhaps most importantly, the results showed that levels of anhedonia were correlated (negatively) with participants' subsequent success at abstinence, even after controlling for the predictive value of craving levels and negative mood. In other words, more quitting-related anhedonia was associated with less success at quitting. Greater post-quitting anhedonia also predicted increased risk of an initial lapse transforming into a full return to smoking. It seems likely that quitting-related anhedonia prompts smokers to want to resume smoking so that they can reinstate their usual ability to enjoy other pleasures in life; and once they lapse, the return of the smoker's usual experience of pleasure acts as a powerful reinforcer.

"The present study is the first, to our knowledge, to demonstrate that post-cessation pleasure in response to daily activities is a significant barrier to quitting smoking," the researchers said. They added that this could point to important new treatment strategies aimed at helping smokers get through their initial experience of anhedonia (such as "behavioural activation"), especially smokers with other mental health issues, who may use smoking to self-treat their chronic anhedonia.

The study makes a useful contribution to the field, but it does suffer some limitations, as the researchers acknowledged. This includes the reliance on the participants' rather vague reports of their daily enjoyment of activities, as well as the fact the sample was enrolled on a treatment programme and highly motivated to quit - it remains to be seen how well the findings will generalise.
_________________________________

  Cook, J., Piper, M., Leventhal, A., Schlam, T., Fiore, M., & Baker, T. (2014). Anhedonia as a Component of the Tobacco Withdrawal Syndrome. Journal of Abnormal Psychology DOI: 10.1037/abn0000016

Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

Is being a worrier a sign of intelligence?

We usually see worry as a bad thing. It feels unpleasant, like a snake coiling in the pit of your stomach. And worriers are often considered weak links in a team - negative influences who lack confidence. But of course, anxiety has a useful function. It's about anticipating and preparing for threats, and learning from past mistakes.

Increasingly psychologists are recognising the strengths of anxious people. For example, there's research showing that people more prone to anxiety are quicker to detect threats and better at lie detection. Now Alexander Penney and his colleagues have conducted a survey of over 100 students and they report that a tendency to worry goes hand in hand with higher intelligence.

The researchers asked the students to complete measures of worry, anxiety, depression, rumination, social phobia, dwelling on past social events, mood, verbal intelligence, non-verbal intelligence, and test anxiety. This last measure was important because the researchers wanted to distinguish trait anxiety from in-the-moment state anxiety and how each relates to intelligence.

The key finding was that after controlling for the influence of test anxiety and current mood, the students who reported a general habit of worrying more (e.g. they agreed with survey statements like "I am always worrying about something") and/or ruminating more (e.g. they said they tended to think about their sadness, or think "what am doing to deserve this?") also tended to score higher on the test of verbal intelligence, which was taken from the well-known Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale.

To take one specific statistical example, verbal intelligence correlated positively with worry proneness with a statistically significant value of 0.19 (after controlling for test anxiety and mood). Together with the measures of rumination, mood and test anxiety, verbal intelligence explained an estimated 46 per cent of the variance in worry.

Another result from the survey, not so promising for worriers, was that a tendency to dwell on past social events was negatively correlated with non-verbal intelligence (that is, those students who dwelt more on past events scored lower on non-verbal IQ).

Seeking to explain these two different and seemingly contradictory correlations, the researchers surmised that: "more verbally intelligent individuals are able to consider past and future events in greater detail, leading to more intense rumination and worry. Individuals with high non-verbal intelligence may be stronger at processing the non-verbal signals they interact with in the moment, leading to a decreased need to re-process past social encounters."

Of course we must be careful not to over-interpret these preliminary results - it was a small, non-clinical sample after all, so it's not clear how the findings would generalise to people with more extreme anxiety. However it's notable that a small 2012 study found a correlation between worry and intelligence in a sample diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder. Penney and his colleagues concluded that: "a worrying and ruminating mind is a more verbally intelligent mind; a socially ruminative mind, however, might be less able to process non-verbal information."

_________________________________

Penney, A., Miedema, V., & Mazmanian, D. (2015). Intelligence and emotional disorders: Is the worrying and ruminating mind a more intelligent mind? Personality and Individual Differences, 74, 90-93 DOI