Posts tagged as:

research

Looking for love? Telling Facebook might hurt your chances

by Andy DeSoto on July 2, 2008

Social networks such as Facebook are excellent places to announce your romantic availability, right?  Large numbers of potential viewers, integration into profiles, search, and more– what’s not to like?  It may not be so easy.  Surprisingly, research by psychologists at Northwestern University and MIT suggests that being too available, let alone desperate for romance, can significantly impact your chances of finding love or dating.  In a paper entitled “Selective Versus Unselective Romantic Desire,” Paul Eastwick, Eli Finkel, Daniel Mochon, and Dan Ariely use observations on speed-dating to uncover some interesting practical information.

The research

The experimenters conducted 7 speed dating sessions for 156 undergraduate students, each of whom went on 4 minute short “dates” with 9 to 13 individuals.  When they returned home, they rated their experiences with each date from 1-9 on three questionnaires covering the following topics:

  • romantic desire (”I really liked my interaction partner.”)
  • chemistry (”My interaction partner and I had a real connection.”)
  • perceived unselectivity (”To what percentage of the other people here today will this person say ‘yes?’”)

Participants also indicated whether or not they’d be interested in future meet-ups with each individual, marking each date as a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’

The results

Interestingly enough, the researchers observed several marked statistically significant findings.  They write,

If a participant uniquely desired a particular partner, the partner tended to reciprocate that unique desire. In addition, a participant’s unique romantic desire for a partner positively predicted the partner’s experience of unique chemistry with the participant … In stark contrast to these dyadic effects and to findings from nonromantic contexts, generalized reciprocity was negative … If a participant generally tended to romantically desire others, those others tended not to desire him or her.  Furthermore, a participant’s tendency to desire everyone negatively predicted partners’ reports of chemistry with that participant.

In other words, their four main findings are:

  1. individuals that liked their interaction partners were liked back
  2. individuals perceived a ‘unique chemistry’ if their interaction partners liked them
  3. individuals that liked everyone were less liked
  4. individuals perceived less ‘unique chemistry’ with partners that liked everyone

The implications


Choosing not to mark that “looking for a relationship” box might help you in the long run!

These results suggest that there are two types of romantic desire: generalized, and specific.  Generalized romantic desire was a turn-off within the speed-dating experience; when individuals picked up on the notion that their dates weren’t especially picky, they rated them much less desirably than individuals they felt were more specific in their affections.

How does this apply to Facebook?  Simple.  By marking yourself as “looking for a relationship,” you’re announcing that you might fall into the ‘generalized romantic desire’ category; that is, you might be perceived to be more interested in finding a relationship or dating than the actual individual you might have a chance at getting together with.  Ironic how announcing your availability can hurt your chances!

Of course, these results can be applied to much more than just a status checkbox within Facebook: interactions within other social networks, classified advertisements, dating sites, and even in person can all take a little bit of advice from this article with a simple bottom line: don’t be desperate.

ResearchBlogging.org

Eastwick, P.W., Finkel, E.J., Mochon, D., Ariely, D. (2007). Selective Versus Unselective Romantic Desire: Not All Reciprocity Is Created Equal. Psychological Science, 18(4), 317-319. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01897.x

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Social networking sites serve as counseling tools

by Andy DeSoto on June 19, 2008

A recent and interesting article to come out of Child and Adolescent Mental Health is a brief discussion of the possibilities of using social networking sites, such as MySpace, as counselings tool to engage adolescent clients.  Clemens, Shipp, and Pisarik (2008) recommend in a recent Practitioner’s Toolkit that mental health experts: a) be aware of social networking sites, and b) be knowledgeable about such sites in order to utilize these services as an occupational tool.

Summary

The amount of information that is generally shared on a social network profile, along with the interactions and encounters that take place and are digitally recorded on such sites, provide a wealth of resources at a mental health professional’s disposal for adequately meeting the needs of developing individuals.  Clemens et al. suggest two approaches for approaching this data:

  1. Use reflection on the individual’s social networking profile as ‘homework.’ If the user steps outside of his or her own perspective for a moment, what does the profile in question say about him or her?  How does a MySpace profile, for instance, shed light on the different facets of the individual’s personality?  Insights arising from this private or shared introspection may guide future sessions.
  2. Have the individual share his or her social networking profile with the professional. The writers suggest this may prompt revealing answers to certain questions such as “in what way does your online profile capture who you are?”  If the psychologist is able to remain impassive and non-judgmental through this process, such a mutual exploration can be extremely rewarding.

Clemens et al. appropriately warn of the level of trust such an openness requires and how sensitive the material posted to social networking sites can be.  The article aptly explains:

Looking over a MySpace profile together might be akin to a client handing you an invisibility cloak and inviting you to tag along on a Friday night to help them make sense of how they are acting in the presence of a group of friends.

In closing, the authors state that social networking sites such as MySpace remain an “untapped resource for mental health professionals.”  Much more work needs to be done to explore frameworks for counseling via these sites, but the benefits are potentially enormously rewarding.

Thoughts

It’s great to see mainstream psychologists utilizing the wealth of information available within social media to assist other human beings.  Although simple observations, such as the ones in this article, barely scratch the surface of the sheer amount of data on human interactions contained within these different services, it’s essays such as this Practitioner’s Toolkit entry that provide the foundation for future quantitative research.  There’s a need for psychologists to become more familiar with social media and online networks in general as more and more relationships are fostered, strengthened, or continued online.

As research continues, I suppose we’ll discover more specific causes, effects, and correlative factors between social networking personae and real-life interactions. For now, though, I’ll happily settle for foundational explorations such as this one.
ResearchBlogging.org

Clemens, E.V., Shipp, A.E., Pisarik, C.T. (2008). MySpace as a tool for mental health professionals. Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 13(2), 97-98.

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