Effects of Facebook Friend Profile Viewing

on Self-Esteem Holly Slang

North Carolina School of Science and MathematicsCenter for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University

When we see a very

popular person on

Facebook, how do

we react?

Does our reaction change from when we see 2,602 friends…

… to 49 friends?

Research Questions

What effect does viewing other people’s profiles, of

varying degrees of popularity, have on self-esteem?o How does this impact happiness and our personal perceived popularity?

Does the context in which we view the profile matter?o Could there be a difference between a comparative vs. an associative

context?

Previous Literature

• Viewing one’s own Facebook profile increases self-

esteem (Gonzales and Hancock, 2011).

• There is strong negative correlation between trait self-esteem and Facebook usage (Mehdizadeh, 2010).

• We perceive that others are happier than we are

online (Chou and Edge, 2012).

Methods – Experiment One• Survey

o N = 242 (Mage=27.3, SD=8.1, 65% Male)

o Amazon Mechanical Turk Services

Do you use Facebook?

Assign Condition

Conditions 2, 3, 4 view other’s profile

and answer questions about that

profile and a behavioral measure

Personal Assessment

Condition 1 (Self) views own profile and

answers questions about own profile

Conditions

Condition 1 - Self

Condition 2 - Fewer

Condition 3 - Equal

Condition 4 - More

Dependent Variables

• Self-Esteem (Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale)

• Happiness

• Popularity

• Behavioral Measure

Self-Esteem

• Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scaleo 10-item Likert scale

Happiness and Popularity

Behavioral Measure: Intention of Post

Results: Self vs. Other

• Participants who looked at another profile reported

higher happiness than participants who looked at their

own (p = .06).

• There was no effect in regards to popularity.

• Participants who looked at their own profile reported

higher self-esteem (p = .31) than participants who

looked at another profile.

2.8

2.85

2.9

2.95

3

3.05

3.1

Self Fewer Equal More

Self-Esteem

Results: Across Four Conditions

F(3,237)=1.19, p= .32

Participants had the lowest self-esteem after viewing the profile of someone who was more popular. They felt best after viewing their own profile, which is consistent with previous research (Gonzales and Hancock, 2011).

3.3

3.4

3.5

3.6

3.7

3.8

3.9

4

Self Fewer Equal More

Popularity

Results: Across Four Conditions

F(3,236)=1.03, p= .38

Participants perceived themselves to be most popular after viewing the profile of a friend with an equal number of friends.

Results: Across Four Conditions

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Fewer Equal More

Intention

F(2,164)=4.34, p= .02

Participants perceived those with more friends to have worse intentions (higher value = showing off).

Results: Across Four Conditions

0

1

2

3

4

5

Fewer Equal More

Likelihood to Like Status

F(2,165)=4.34, p= .02

Participants were more willing to like the status of those with similar popularity.

Results: Gender Differences

• Men and women reported looking at a friend of the

same sex around two-thirds of the time.

• Men report significantly higher self-esteem and

popularity when viewing a friend’s profile who had

more friends than they did (association).

• Women, in contrast, report lower self-esteem and

popularity (social comparison).

These results led to the creation of Experiment Two.

Methods – Experiment Two• Survey

o N = 285 (Mage=28.8, SD=9.56, 62% Male)

o Amazon Mechanical Turk Services

Do you use Facebook?

Assign Priming (Associative or comparative)

Assign Condition (More, less, or

equal popularity)

View other’s profile and

answer questions about that profile and a behavioral

measure Personal Assessment

• Dependent Variableso Same as in Experiment Two

Adding Primes

• Participants were primed at the very beginning with

a short statement.

• Association: “It is important in life to develop

relationships with people” in order to encourage

thoughts about friendships and unity.

• Comparison: “It is important in life to develop a

competitive edge” in order to encourage thoughts

about competition and individuation.

• Then asked to reflect with a short response on a

situation in which the participant’s assigned strength

(relationships vs. competitive edge) aided them.

Results: Gender Differences

Men’s self-esteem was about equal for all levels of popularity in the associative context. However, in a comparative context, men felt the highest self-esteem when viewing someone who was less popular.

Results: Gender Differences

Women’s self-esteem was about equal in the comparison condition across all popularity levels. However, they had the lowest self-esteem when viewing equally popular friends in an associative context.

Conclusions

• Social networking impacts us in more ways than we are consciously aware.

• In Study 1, we found that self-esteem is lower when viewing the profile of a more popular person, but popularity is higher.

• We perceive a more popular person to have intentions of showing off more than an equally popular person and significantly more than a less popular person.

• We are more likely to contribute “likes” to posts by equally popular people.

• There are significant gender differences in how men and women respond to each other online.

Conclusions (cont.)

• In Study 2, we found men are most affected by social comparisons of those who are around as popular as them, while women worry more about the extremes, those much more popular than them.

• Men felt self-esteem increases when viewing a less popular person and decreases when viewing a more popular person, while women felt the opposite in the comparison condition.

• The genders reacted differently to the primes.

• However, there are significant differences in how men and women behave online.

Future Studies

• Future studies should look to investigate more perceptions or behaviors associated with Facebook usage.

• We should investigate the differences between changes in self-esteem and perceived popularity in that the former seemed to be connected to comparison and the latter appeared to be association.

• We should also conduct another experiment with the focus of uncovering the many gender differences in online social networking.

• Gaining some insight into why these behaviors exist can help us understand our interactions, both online and offline.

Acknowledgments

• Mentors: Dr. Dan Ariely and Dr. Lalin Anik

• Center for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University

• Research coordinator: Dr. Sarah Shoemaker

• Transportationo NCSSM

o NCSSM Foundation Board

o Biogen Idec

Works Cited

Gonzales, A. L., & Hancock, J. T. (2011). Mirror, Mirror on my Facebook Wall:

Effects of Exposure to Facebook on Self-Esteem.

Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking , 14 (1-2), 79-82.

Mehdizadeh, S. (2010). Self-Presentation 2.0: Narcissism and Self-Esteem on

Facebook. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking , 13 (4), 357-

364.

Rosenberg, M. (1965). Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press.