A quantitative study on how friends can affect our social desirability

Facebook FriendsA study of perceived attractiveness and popularity

HPS121 Lab Report Assignment

Vic Vrsecky

Student ID. 213 349 752

Presented 14/8/2013

Department of Psychology

Deakin University

(Off Campus)

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Abstract

Online social networking is rapidly becoming an important way of

creating and maintaining links among friends. Unlike traditional

friend relationships however, the notion of online friends has

taken on a much broader meaning and often includes that

connection of people who would ordinarily not be classified as

friends in the traditional meaning. The precise meaning of

friendship in a computer mediated environment such as Facebook

remains a topic of some debate. The centre of the controversy is

about the precise meaning of online friends. It is quite possible

to have many online friends that a user has never met, nor even

had a conversation with. In many ways ‘friends’ in this context

does not resemble the traditional meaning of friends. Some online

friends are granted friendship status by users simply because

they were suggested by others or the computer system itself.

Essentially only fairly vague familiarity can be sufficient cause

to enable one to be added as a Facebook friend.

This study postulates that the halo effect still exists within a

specific computer mediated environment. It is historically

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documented, that sociometric popularity and perceived

attractiveness increases when the quantity of one’s friends is

perceived to be greater. Whilst the halo effect was shown to

exist in earlier studies, specific information on how the effect

carries forward into current online social settings including

Facebook remains of interest. Facebook is used as the test medium

to evaluate the hypotheses that people are perceived to be more

attractive and more popular when their Facebook profile is

associated with an increasing number of online friends. The

intention is to shed further light on these and other related

ideas, and discuss some interesting results obtained from the

research. The implications are far reaching and could have value

for not only further research but for online social media

developers, professionals in other fields of practice and to the

general public at large.

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Introduction

Does the halo effect exist and if so what is it? Discussed

extensively in a research article by Dion, Bershield and Walster

(1972), the writers pose that the halo effect is a phenomena in

which more physically attractive people are assumed to possess

more desirable traits than persons less so. Furthermore they

suggest that more attractive people are also better people all-

round. Whilst their study explains and shows the existence of the

halo effect, a new question arises about the validity of the data

some forty years later and particularly as it applies to our

current online social networking experiences.

The classic research by Tversky and Kahneman’s (1974) showed

that even a brief exposure to high or extreme value numbers

triggers decision heuristics in humans within a wide variety of

environmental settings. This kind of decision anchoring has been

investigated in a variety of settings. One study by Kleck, Reese,

Behnken, and Sundar (2007) showed how the number of Facebook

friends triggers a positive social judgment.

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Attractive individuals are perceived to possess more socially

desirable personalities. Karen, Dion, Ellen &Berscheid (1972)

support that idea and further assert that the more attractive an

individual, the more likely they are to live happier and more

successful lives.

Traditionally, the exchange of business cards, resumes and

references were used as the means of creating and then

maintaining ones image (Kleck et al.2007), but the virtual media

opportunity has grown to become a significant method of

presenting and also maintaining ones image.

Aims

The aims of this experiment were three-fold. The first part

was to validate that the fabricated profile images used in this

experiment were consistently perceived as attractive and less

attractive by the participants.

The second aim was to determine if the halo effect persists

in online social network situations, specifically in Facebook,

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and if it does then to find out how it manifests in terms of

social desirability and perception of attractiveness.

Utilising three different coefficients of friends as the

independent variables, the final aim was to discover how the

perception of beauty, attractiveness and popularity varied with

lesser and greater numbers of perceived Facebook friends. The

number of Facebook friends was used as the dependant variable and

was considered in separate trials for both the attractive version

of Linda as well as the neutral version.

Hypothesis

There are four hypotheses.

Based on prior research in this area the prediction is that

the number of Facebook friends a profile has positively

influences measures of personality and desirability.

That the neutral attractiveness profile will be rated less

attractive than the more attractive profile

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That the halo effect exists in the online context as it does

in face to face evaluations.

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Method

Paticipants

In order to test the hypothesis Deakin University

undergraduate students studying HPS121 Introduction to Psychology

were selected as voluntary participants. Data was gathered in the

first week of trimester 2, 2013. The sample students were

selected by a computer program which randomly allocated

participants into groups with participants having an equal chance

of being selected into any group. Balancing out particular

individual variability was achieved in this way. A moderate sized

sample group was selected from the population of students, n=578

(Facebook users only) from a larger sample of students n=624

(Facebook & Non Facebook Users). By excluding Non Facebook users

the experimenters assured that all participants were themselves

familiar with a typical Facebook profile. This exclusion further

reduced the chance of arbitrary decisions skewing the data. Ages

of participants were 18-61 years, M=21.86 years, SD 6.88years.

115 males and 463 females comprised the final sample used.

Materials

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Six fictitious Facebook profiles were created and presented

to the students by way of a URL link to a webpage. Participants

were directed to only one of six versions of the profile when

they followed the URL link that was provided. The facial images

that participants saw were of a female Deakin University student

named Linda Brown who was living in Melbourne, Australia.

Half of the six profile images were high in attractiveness

and the other half were less attractive. For each

attractive/unattractive pair of profiles the numbers of friends

displayed in the profile were 0, 302 and 502. The nett effect was

that six unique profiles were used as the stimulus material.

Procedure

Participants accessed a given profile by clicking on a link

online in the first week of their course and took part in the

study individually and voluntarily. The stimuli were presented

using a double blind methodology. Neither participants nor

experimenters had knowledge of which profile was presented as

profile links were randomised and distributed by the software

program. The independent variables used were the coefficient of

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Facebook friends shown as part of the profile and the two level

of attractiveness of the image displayed. The dependant variables

were levels of Attractiveness and Social Desirability. The method

was performed with ethical standards in mind and the study was

endorsed by the Ethics Committee APA.

The six Facebook images used were fictitious and were

selected based on the results of pre-testing with university age

focus groups. The images were rated in pre-tests as neutral and

high in physical attractiveness. The original physical and social

attractiveness measures used were the same as used by Tong, et

al., (2008) and originally created by McCroskey and McCain

(1974).

Students who viewed Profiles 1&4 were asked how socially

desirable and how attractive Linda was. They were also asked

three questions irrelevant to the study about their own gender,

age and whether they had a Facebook profile themselves. These

additional questions were used to detract attention of the

participants from the questions of interest. Students who viewed

Profiles 2,3,5 & 6 were asked how socially desirable Linda was.

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They were also asked the same three fill questions as the

participants viewing Profiles 1&4. The scale used for both

Attractiveness and Social Desirability was the 7 point Likert

scale, ranging from 1(not at all) to 7(extremely).

Data were collated by the Deakin University Department of

Psychology staff and was analysed with the aid of IBM SPSS

Statistics (ver. 21) program at the conclusion of the study.

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Results

Tables 1-4 present the mean scores for the experimental groups on

the variables investigated.

Table 1

Summary statistics for Profile 1 and Profile 4 in regard to Attractiveness

Attractiveness

M SD

Profile 1 3.20 1.22

Profile 4 5.29 1.06

There was a difference between the Profile 1 group mean scores

and the Profile 4 group mean scores in regards to Attractiveness.

An independent measures t-test showed that the difference between

the data in Table 1 was significant, t(189) = -12.64, p < .05.

Table 2

Summary statistics for Profile 1 and Profile 4 in regard to Social Desirability

Social Desirability

M SD

Profile 1 2.61 1.29

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Profile 4 3.28 1.37


and the Profile 4 group mean scores in regards to Social

Desirability. An independent measures t-test showed that the

difference between the data in Table 2 was significant, t(190) =

-3.47, p < .05.

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Table 3


Social Desirability

M SD

Profile 2 3.88 1.31

Profile 3 2.55 1.19




difference between the data in Table 3 was significant, t(208) =

4.46, p < .05.

Table 4


Social Desirability

M SD

Profile 5 4.27 1.19

Profile 6 4.16 1.37

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difference between the data in Table 4 was not significant,

t(192) = 1.54, p > .05.

Discussion

The findings of this study indicate that Profiles 1-3 scored

higher than Profiles 1-4 in both attractiveness and social

desirability. Our results (Tables 1 & 2) allowed us to

differentiate two sets of profiles with statistical significance

on both measures. From these results we could conclude that the

more attractive profile was indeed more attractive than the less

attractive profile. Because the mean was 3.20 on the Likert scale

for less attractive Linda we labeled the profile as Neutral

Attractive Linda. Similarly the more attractive profile mean was

5.29 on the Likert scale and we classified that profile as Highly

Attractive Linda.

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Kleck, Reese, Behnken & Sundar, (2007) argued that the

quantity of profile owners’ Facebook friends has a linear

relationship with their social attractiveness. Further

investigation by Tong,Van Der Heide & Langwell (2008) predicted

that as the number of Facebook friends increases beyond 302 that

the relationship to perceived attractiveness becomes less

profound. Their findings support the hypothesis that as users

Facebook friend’s increases beyond a definable point that the

perceived social attractiveness of a user does not increase as

markedly and may in fact reduce the perception of attractiveness.

Our findings support that increasing a users Facebook friends

beyond 302 does diminish the rate of increase in social

desirability and attractiveness for a profile that is itself

neutral in attractiveness and desirability. The prediction is

validated by our own findings and supports findings by Tong et

al., (2008). On the other hand, in the case of a more attractive

and socially desirable individual, the study was inconclusive in

determining that having up to 502 Facebook friends has any effect

on their level of attractiveness or social desirability to

others.

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Whilst studies initially predicted but did not find a

correlation between physical attractiveness and the number of

Facebook friends, they concluded that the presence of other cues

anchored the judgment of physical attractiveness (Tong, et al.,

2008). They supported that the friend coefficient is a relatively

potent cue but not an anchor in itself. Whilst our study results

did not extend to how other profile cues may influence a belief

system or perception, the fact that our results showed

inconsistent results for one of the profiles would tend to

correlate with assertions put forward by Tong et al.,(2008).

It is common knowledge that Facebook friends are often no

more than online acquaintances who are on the most part unlikely

to refuse a friend request (Boyd,2007).

As the developers of Facebook modify what information users

allow others to view, the friend’s coefficient may not be

presented on a profile as obviously as previously and therefore

will not be immediately subconsciously registered. It may still

be possible to discover the number of friends on a given profile

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by drilling down, but the current data may be skewed as a result.

Further, more probing research may validate that hypothesis in

order to discover if the current findings can be generalised to

take those dynamic Facebook changes into account.

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Limitations

Selecting students from a university setting as participants,

does not cover the full demographics of our society. Typically

university students are much more socially active than the older

generation and further research with participants from an older

population sample may produce significantly different results.

For example, older people who are active on Facebook may consider

that a high number of Facebook friends could be much lower than

was found in this study, perhaps even as few as 50. An individual

maintains about 150 traditional social relationships (Tong et

al., 2000). For the older and perhaps less social demographic, it

is quite possible that numbers as high as 150 could be perceived

to be too many to be plausible. The writer recommends further

research to discover more specific relationships. If lower

figures are verified then the halo effect could be centred on a

reduced coefficient of Facebook friends more in line with the

halo effect as it pertains to the traditional meaning of friends.

Of course there are many other limitations to this study. The

fact that it was conducted using only a single gender base or

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that it did not evaluate cultural expectations and norms is a

further limitation.

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References

Boyd,d. (2007), May). Error: You must be someone’s friend to comment on

them. Paper presented at the annual conference of

International Communication Association, San Francisco.

Dion, K.K., Bercheid, E., & Walster,E. (1972). What is Beautiful

is Good. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1972, Vol24, No.

3, p. 285-290

Kleck, C.A., Reece,C.A., Behnken.D.Z., Sundar,S.S., (2007, May

24-28). The Company you keep and the image you project: Putting your best

face forward in online social networks. Paper presented at the 57th

Annual Conference of the International Communication

Association, San Francisco, CA, May 24-28, 2007

McCroskey, J.C., & McCain,T.A (1974). The measurement of

interpersonal attraction.

Speech Monographs, 41, 261-266.

Nisbett, R.E., & Wilson, T.D, (1977). The Halo Effect:Evidence of

unconscious Alteration of Judgement. Journal of Personality and

Social Psychology. 1977, Vol 35, No. 4, 250-256

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Tong, S.T., Van Der Heide, B., & Langwell, L. (2008). Too Much of

a Good Thing? Journal of Computer-Mediated Communications, 13 (2008)

531-549

Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty:

Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124-1130.

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A quantitative study on how friends can affect our social desirability

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