The Luck Laboratory

Do you seem likeable? Just look at your Facebook page

Via the World of Psychology, I just came across a study published in this month’s Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, “On being liked on the web and in the “real world”: Consistency in first impressions across personal webpages and spontaneous behavior.” (Download here.)

The key finding was that participants rated as more likable in the flesh also tended to be rated as more likable based on their Facebook page. Video-recordings of the face-to-face contacts suggested it was participants who were more non-verbally expressive (through facial expression and tone of voice) who tended to be rated as more likable.

Similarly, participants with more expressive Facebook pages — for example having more photos available to view — tended to be judged as more likable.

Since this test was only conducted on 37 college students, it’s good sense to take the results with a “grain of salt,” according to PsychCentral’s World of Psychology, where I found the study. But there’s good reason for WoP’s apparent defensiveness: the title of their response, Your Facebook Page is a Mirror Reflection of How Well Liked You Are, doesn’t accurately relay one of the study’s main themes of impression management.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who knows someone with a ‘high degree of webpage expressivity’ whose apparent warmth is offset by other personality traits. As I’ve written about before with regards to dating websites, people are experience goods, meaning they’re impossible to judge on something as static as a Facebook page. Your impression of someone is different than how you’d actually get along, since we vary in differing situations, change over time, and other people’s personalities bring out differing aspects of our own.

People who displayed cues to social expressivity on their personal webpages also displayed nonverbal cues to social expressivity during the face-to-face interaction. Likewise, people who disclosed a lot of information about themselves on personal webpages also disclosed a great deal of information about themselves during the face-to-face interaction.

Of the study’s many unanswered questions, I’m most curious about what effect age has to do with this perception about high expressivity. It’s funny how non-digital natives see openness in person as a positive trait, but on the web, call it exhibitionism, obviously related to whether you think the internet is showing an extension of yourself, or that your web presence is something else entirely.

Social networking sites: pretty scary effects, when you think about it

Findings from a few recently-published academic papers (email me if you want the specifics):

Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, or SNS, can impact self-perception in ways not unlike that of the media influencing celebrities, creating an odd blend of narcissism and insecurity. Publicly displaying of a few areas of one’s life (a theme song and a few photos) are followed by amplified, speedy responses.

But the more reliant you are on this for your self-worth—using it to ‘brand’ yourself or rack up friends, for example—the more likely you are to fall victim to its whims.

Facebook, MySpace, cell phones, instant messaging are great for keeping in touch with people we already know. But because we only transmit a few aspects of ourselves online, and don’t have as many opportunities to reinforce those relationships, bonds we make with other people through technology aren’t as strong.

The size of one’s online social network is different than the number of one’s social ties, and today many teens, especially, seem to be confusing the two. (”But it says that I have 900 friends on the computer!”) Perceived support from significant others is not related to time spent online.

The trick is that while people rely on these venues for keeping in touch with friends, more people rely on those online relationships for support, the lonelier they feel. A glut of online friends can’t act as a buffer for an absence of real-life friends.

How they influence how we present ourselves: one online SNS trap is the drive to befriend as many people as possible. When you can directly compare your number of “friends” to the number of “friends” your favorite band has, a desire “which is underpinned by that hidden aspiration to meet their favourite band,” you lose sense of the actual social dynamics at play.

According to one author, “the distributed nature of on-line friendship networks… appears to reinforce conservatism and homogeneity in how young people express themselves. Our take on this is that if you want a big network you have to appeal to as many people as possible [which] creates a drive towards homogeneity.” So, in order to find our 15 minutes of fame, everyone takes the combination low road/middle ground and ends up looking like Paris Hilton. Because of the misuse of the word ‘friend’ on these sites, everyone runs the risk of blending the idea of fans, acquaintances, and friends.

Can we really become someone else? Yes and no. At the very least, we have to ground the identity of our online selves in our offline selves. While changing the details on one’s profile allows for experimentation of different forms of identity, “On-line communities are if anything more aggressive in challenging people’s identity. For example, when users change their profiles this is often followed by postings from friends offering teasing, mocking or straightforwardly critical remarks about the changes.” In a public forum, what may be intended as a loving tease takes on a different tone. And the size of one’s online network doesn’t have any bearing on the strength of someone’s actual social ties.

Instant messaging means fewer distractions

According to Newswise, a study recently published in the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication by researchers at Ohio State University and UC Irvine “found that workers who used instant messaging on the job reported less interruption than colleagues who did not.” The report goes on to say that using instant messaging was often used for short information queries that otherwise would have been handled in a lengthier, more time-consuming email, in a phone call, or in a–gasp! the horror!–face-to-face talk. People are also using IM to schedule meetings instead of just dropping in. Because it’s also “more socially acceptable” to not answer instant messages, they offer the user an opportunity to tailor the conversation or interaction to his needs. You don’t have to talk to someone just because someone else wants to talk to you.

Granted, this has always been the case. When I was young, I remember my mother letting the answering machine take calls because she was too busy after working and going to  school to have a 5-minute conversation, half of which would be to say “sorry! so tired!” and arrange another phone call.

If emails are like letters without stamps–at best–instant messages are shaping up to be like emails with even less authority. I find it very hard to take anything transmitted over IM with any seriousness or gravity. You don’t know who’s at the other person’s computer, who’s writing it, or what any of them are doing.  There’s no authority to them unless, of course, you’re the person sending the message who really has something to say. I don’t think that IM in themselves are causing few distractions. I think that they’re just another way to annoy us, and therefore helping us to build up yet another layer of noise to ignore.

There’s a difference between important and urgent information that often gets confused. Just because something has to be done soon-ish (you need a pen, you lost your umbrella, there are dirty dishes) doesn’t automatically make it of utmost importance to someone’s overall goals. The major goals we have in life don’t distract us. People gossiping do. People, able to reach out to whomever and for whatever reason, fearing loneliness, contact each other just because. Not because they have anything to say, but just because they have a minute to spare or a tiny, potentially original thought came to mind.

Save those thoughts. Store them. Make a few of those into a larger, more interesting thought, and then give me a call when you have something important to say. And don’t feel bad if other people don’t call you all the time. As Joan Didion would attest to, you already have better things to worry about: “To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves–there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.”