Blog 10

How does social networking influence interpersonal behavior?

 

As we learned throughout the course of the semester, especially during this past weekend at Lake Laurel, it is clear that social media has a very large influence on interpersonal behavior.  As the various final videos depicted, social networking can impact interpersonal behavior in a variety of ways.  My own group’s video showed the how Facebook has influenced relationships from the development of feelings all the way through the break up.  It is now easier to “meet” potential partners through the larger pool of people on the social network and it is now much easier to end a relationship through a simple click of a button to change one’s relationship status from “in a relationship” to “single”.  We also depicted a lot of the drama or conflicts that are in a relationship because of activity on Facebook.  A lot of the information we found for our video was from the second reading assignment, A Review on Facebook Research in the Social Sciences (2012).    We also showed how a narcissist would display their personality through the means of Facebook.  This includes a lot of “selfies”, or pictures of just yourself, and also a lot of status updates that are by nature self-centered or appear to be bragging.  This role of the narcissist was played by Ashley as she talked about her recent posts on Facebook and how she “looked so hot” and that this was her “best status ever”.  We used the reading about narcissists, You Probably Think This Paper’s About You: Narcissists’ Perceptions of Their Personality and Reputation (2011).  These were just a few simple examples of how various aspects of social network can change, enhance or generally influence interpersonal behavior. 

 

Manago, A. M., Taylor, T., & Greenfield, P. M. (2012). Me and my 400 friends: The anatomy of college students’ Facebook networks, their communication patterns, and well-being. Developmental Psychology, 48(2), 369-380. doi:10.1037/a0026338

 

Carlson, E. N., Vazire, S., & Oltmanns, T. F. (2011). You probably think this paper is about you: Narcissists’ perceptions of their personality and reputation. Journal of personality and social psychology,101(1), 185-201. doi: 10.1037/a0023781

Imago: Reading 9

WBP9: Set up a social networking dating site that uses the principles of imago relationship therapy.

This weeks reading explained a type of couples counseling called Imago Relationship Therapy (IRT).  IRT highlights the importance of communication and validation of the partner’s feelings by clearing expressing that they understand how they feel, even if they do not necessarily agree.  It also discusses how it is important to not mirror each others emotions, and that just because one partner is upset and mad, does not mean that the other needs to respond with the same feelings.  This emphasis of truly listening to one another is the main focus of Imago’s website.  A social network dating site made with IRT in mind would look to find matches for pairs in a similar way as other dating websites, such as eHarmony, do where couples are put together based on interests, values, etc.  Once a successful match has been made then the IRT would come more into play then.  The website would continue to check up on the couple to make sure that the lines of communication are still intact and would provide tips on doing so.  It would also have IRT specialists available for advice on how the couple can listen and validate each other as they begin to create a long lasting and successful relationship.  An IRT focused dating website would go much further with the couple then the typical dating site would by making sure they are communicating from the very beginning and following them throughout the relationship. 

 

 

 

eharmony . (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.eharmony.com/

 

Imago relationship therapy. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://gettingtheloveyouwant.com/

 

Zielinski, J. J. (1999). Discovering Imago Relationship Therapy. Psychotherapy, 36(1), 91-100.

 

Communicating Commitment: Reading 8

WBP8: What is the relationship between (1) one’s gender (2) saying “I love you” and (3) having sexual relationships? How might these elements of a relationship be visible on Facebook

 

This weeks reading discussed the differences between men and women saying I love you and when and why they say it.  It found that despite the stereotype that women are the first to express their love for their partner, it is in fact actually the man in the relationship that tends to say I love you first.  Another article from an eHarmony blog stated similar results as the reading.   Both the blog and the reading stated that if the couple had yet to have sex then the man was more likely to say I love you first with the idea that it would lead to sex sooner.  If the couple had had sex before then it takes longer for I love you to be said.  Although it is at first surprising to think that the woman doesn’t say I love you first, when the man’s motives come to light, then it seems to make a little more sense.  This affection and intimacy between a couple can be easily recognized through their activity on Facebook.  This blog lists examples of what it calls PDA on Facebook.   Some of these aspects perfectly describe couples who are taking their relationship to the next level with saying I love you.  As the blog describes, overly affectionate couples begin to write I love you all over their partners wall and will ‘like’ all of their partners posts and statuses.  Along with this, both of them will only have profile pictures of the two of them together.  All of these show when the couple are clearly open about their affection and love for each other. 

 

 

Ackerman, J., Griskevicius, V., & Li, N. (2011). Let’s get serious: Communicating commitment in romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1037/a0022412

 

Anonymous. Annoying couples on facebook. (2012, April 29). Retrieved from http://sexandthetwenties.com/pda-on-facebook/

 

Lee, Erina (2012). Read This Before Saying “I Love You”. Retrieved from: http://www.eharmony.com/blog/2012/11/12/read-this-before-saying-i-love-you/#.US1_zY7hA00

 

Gratitude: Reading 7

 

As this weeks reading explained, appreciation and gratitude can be very beneficial for not only a relationship, but the individuals involved as well.  If a person feels appreciated then they in turn become more gracious as well, which usually leads to a happier and longer lasting relationship.  Gratitude encourages people to do right by one another and builds positive environments, relationships, and individuals.  Gratitude on Facebook has been increasingly growing in popularity.  It has become a common occurrence to see people post statuses or share links that proclaim their appreciation for friends, family, partners, religion, etc.  In recent months, university students have taken it upon themselves to take this gratitude a step further.  This article explains one particular college, Pennsylvania State University, which has a “Compliments” page on Facebook where students can submit anonymous compliments about one another and the admin will post them.  “The page serves as a social media platform to spread good cheer and kindness among the campus community” (Medina, 2012).  This is a great example of how Facebook can add positivity to the community when people might not have had the chance to otherwise.  Oprah, with the help of the creator of SuperBetter, has been doing something similar to this by creating a game focused on spreading gratitude via Facebook, called the Thank You Game.  The objective is for people to write meaningful thank you posts and then see how many people it can reach out to.  It posts daily challenges on what to be grateful for and aims to thank half a billion people worldwide.  The person can then share their thank you through Oprah’s Facebook page and see other people’s thank you’s.  This is creating a really fun incentive to promote the relationship building practices of showing gratitude through Facebook. 

 

 

 

 

Medina, S. (2012, December 1). University compliments page spreads kindness and good cheer. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/01/penn-state-compliments-fa_n_2215751.html

Own and oprah.com launches oprah’s thank you game on facebook. (2012, April 30). Retrieved from http://www.oprah.com/pressroom/OWN-Oprahcom-Launches-Oprahs-Thank-You-Game

Gordon, A. M., Oveis, C., Impett, E. A., Kogan, A., & Keitner, D.(2012). To Have and to Hold: Gratitude Promotes RelationshipMaintenance in Intimate Bonds. Journal Of Personality & Social Psychology, 103(2), 257-274. doi:10.1037/a0028723

Partner Preferences: Reading 6

 

As this weeks reading discussed, there’s a lot that goes into a persons partner preferences and how they actually get along with a person.  It mentioned certain tests they performed where sometimes a couple’s partner preference didn’t match up but they were together and happy regardless, and other situations where the partner preferences did match but the two people were not interested in each other.  The in-person interaction between them goes against what they said on paper. I think this is really interesting considering how a modern relationship, especially one that involves long distance, is really dependent on technology and social medias.  So many people meet and get involved in serious relationships via Facebook and dating websites, leaving out the entire face-to-face contact part of the relationship.  Despite the number of people who are involved in relationships over the internet, there seem to be a lot of issues with truly getting to know the real person over facebook.  In the MTV series, Catfish: The TV Show, every episode tells the story of someone involved in an online relationship and almost every time they discover that the other person is lying about who they are. Months or even years are wasted with lies because they never actually interacted face-to-face.  Over the internet, the couple seems perfect for each other and claim to be in love, but as soon as they meet in person, everything changes.  A less extreme version of this would be online dating.  You are first exposed to the person over the internet based on compatible traits that people list on their profiles, but it is not until the pair go on a real life date do they really test out if they are interested in one another.  Similar to what this CNN article discusses, this seems extremely unnatural.  “’At the end of the day, we are designed for human contact, not a computer screen.’” (Strickland, 2013).  Facebook has made the unnatural to be the social norm for finding a partner. 

 

 

 Eastwick, P. W., Finkel, E. J., & Eagly, A. H. (2011, June 27). When and Why Do Ideal Partner Preferences Affect the Process of Initiating and Maintaining Romantic Relationships?. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0024062 

Catfish: The tv show. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.mtv.com/shows/catfish/series.jhtml

Strickland, A. (2013, February 12). The lost art of offline dating. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/12/living/lost-art-offline-dating/index.html

Prosocial Gossip: Reading 5

Cyber-bullying has become a major problem around the country within the last few years as Facebook has reached all time highs of popularity.  Gossiping over the internet has had such horrible consequences to the point that people have committed suicide over the hateful words said about them on Facebook.  As this CNN article summarizes, Facebook has become fully aware of this situation and have made specific changes to help prevent this from happening, which includes a much more detailed form of reporting cyber-bullying and they provide links to professionals to help anyone feeling deeply depressed or suicidal over the gossip.  As great as these changes Facebook are making are, it would be even greater if people could learn to only get involved with prosocial gossip, the positive version of talking about others that the reading described.  The reading and a separate article discussed the positive outcomes of proscocial gossip.  As they both stated, it does not only reflect well on the person you are talking about, but yourself as well.  A person that talks well of others is thought of in a more positive light than those who speak negatively about other people.  If this prosocial gossip could be used on the internet, then Facebook would transform into a much more healthy and safer place for people to interact with one another.  I think if this happens then Facebook could become even more popular than it already is because people won’t have the negative feelings that go along with non prosocial gossip. 

 

 

Kelly, H. (2012, July 12). Facebook fuses emotion to its anti-bullying efforts. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/12/tech/facebook-cyberbullying-update

Johnson, L. D. (2011, February 4). Did you hear?..positive gossip. Retrieved from http://psychologyofwellbeing.com/201102/positive-gossip.html

Feinberg, M., Willer, R., Stellar, J., & Keltner, D. (2012, January 9). The Virtues of Gossip:
Reputational Information Sharing as Prosocial Behavior. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0026650

Meta-insight: Reading 4

As the reading explained, meta-insight refers to the way a person sees himself or herself and how it relates to how other people see them.  According to the reading, people tend to be relatively accurate in knowing how other people view them to be.  Many times, this does not necessarily align with how they view themselves, but they are aware of the discrepancies between the two views.  As this relates to Facebook, as the last reading described, sometimes people are harshly judged by their Facebook profiles.  Their pictures and posts are criticized as a representation of themselves.  A Mobiledia article discusses this and peoples responses to this fact.  “Everyone knows Facebook isn’t a random snapshot of the reality of someone’s life, but rather a deliberately arranged presentation of how you want to be seen.”(Rock, 2012).  People specifically choose what they do and don’t post on their Facebook because they want people to see them a specific way.  This shows that they are aware of how people see them and they post things in accordance with this idea of them, whether its accurate to their real life or not.  People see their facebook the same way other people do, it just might not be the right portrayal of who they really are.

Carlson, E. N., Vazire, S., & Furr, R. M. (2011, June 20). Meta-Insight: Do People Really Know How Others See Them?. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0024297

Wilson, E. R., Gosling, D. S., Graham, L. T. (2012). A Review of Facebook Research in the Social Sciences, Perspectives on Pscyhological Science, 7, 203. DOI: 10.1177/1745691612442904

Rock, M. (2012, September 19). What your facebook photo says about you..and facebook. Retrieved from http://www.mobiledia.com/news/163978.html

Narcissist: Reading 3

When looking at Facebook, it seems that everyone has at least one of those friends that is constantly posting pictures of themselves and posts status updates on every little aspect of their day and the intimate detail of their lives for the world to see.  To be blunt, these people are annoying and seem to be so full of themselves that they forget that Facebook is supposed to be used for interacting with other people, not just boasting themselves.  They seem to always be on Facebook, but never to post on any one else’s walls or status updates.  They’re narcissistic personality shines through the walls of the social media website to show their true fascination with themself.  A New York Times article commented on this by stating that Facebook does not turn people into narcissists and doesn’t even always create the best environment for narcissists but on the other hand, another social media, Twitter, does seem to host a large amount of narcissists.  This takes the idea of constant status updates and magnifies it on Twitter.  Compared to social media narcissists, people with narcissistic qualities are sometimes harder to distinguish in real life.  Like the reading mentioned, narcissists originally come across as very nice and personable when they are first met.  It is later on that people are able to pick up on their narcissism.  As the reading and an article from Psychology Today addressed, there is one theory that narcissists sometimes aren’t even aware of their narcissism.  Although these two articles contradict on if they agree with this notion, the idea that the person could or could not be aware of their character can make it confusing on if someone is really narcissistic and what is making them like this. 

 

Parker-Pope, T. (2012, May 17). Does facebook turn people into narcissists?. Retrieved from http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/does-facebook-turn-people-into-narcissists/

 

Kreger, R. (2011, November 28). Behind the facade: The ‘false self’ of the narcissist. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stop-walking-eggshells/201111/behind-the-facade-the-false-self-the-narcissist

 

Carlson, E. N., Vazire, S., & Oltmanns, T. F. (2011). You probably think this paper is about you: Narcissists’ perceptions of their personality and reputation. Journal of personality and social psychology,101(1), 185-201. doi: 10.1037/a0023781

Facebook: Reading 2

Over the years, through my high school and college careers, Facebook has become a massive social media network that seems to have more impact on peoples lives then I ever thought would be possible.  As the article, A Review of Facebook Research in the Social Sciences, revealed, Facebook has a large influence on how close people are to one another.  In a positive light, long lost friends and relatives can reconnect and continue their relationships from a distance.   Other friendships can blossom and evolve through Facebook as well.  A similar research article to this one discussed that they found that a lot of activity on Facebook will promote happiness in people (1).  Although on the surface this seems easily as a really great thing, this can sometimes turn negative.  A documentary, Catfish, features a young man that began an online relationship with a woman on Facebook, but she turned to be lying about her entire life and was schizophrenic.  As this 20/20 segment documented (2), he wasted 9 months of his life in a relationship with a complete lie.  This is the downfall of internet based relationships.  People miss out on the actual human contact that makes relationships have depth, truth, and honesty in them.  Relationships that rely solely on Facebook and technology are unnatural and lead to a lot of issues.  Its incredibly easy for miscommunications and misunderstandings to happen because tone and facial expressions don’t come across through messages and this creates conflict.  All too often my friends will tell me about a fight they had a with a spouse or friend over Facebook, whether it be because someone “liked” something they shouldn’t have, or became friends with someone, or they said something that was taken in the wrong context over Facebook chat, and every time I tell them to actually speak in person.  The person to person interaction makes anything that happens on some social media site seems stupid and insignificant when talked about aloud. 

 

 

1) Manago, A. M., Taylor, T., & Greenfield, P. M. (2012). Me and my 400 friends: The anatomy of college students’ Facebook networks, their communication patterns, and well-being. Developmental Psychology, 48(2), 369-380. doi:10.1037/a0026338

2) Berman, T., & DEUTSCH, G. (2010, October 08). Catfish movie: A tale of twisted cyber romance. Retrieved from http://abcnews.go.com/2020/catfish-movie-tale-twisted-cyber-romance/story?id=11817470

Lifestyle Changes: Reading 1

The article Lifestyle and Mental Health, written by Roger Walsh, discusses simple and easy lifestyle changes that are proven to dramatically improve one’s life and overall physical and mental health.  Just a few of these suggestions include exercise, relaxation and stress management, and nutrition and diet.  These all seem to be easy enough and make logical sense to be good for us, but the large majority of people still seem to avoid making these adjustments to their life.  Whether it’s because of laziness, time constraints, or absent mindedness, people give themselves reasons to not change.  In a time of disease, over processed food and an emphasis on stress and technology, it is more crucial then ever for people to better themselves.  To promote this idea, supporters must now move to social networks to convince people to change their lifestyles.  One website, www.superbetter.com (1) has begun this by allowing people to track their goals, easily used for exercise and nutrition, by giving them tasks to complete and sends encouraging texts to remind people to continue their work.  This website is easily linked to Facebook so that it can be published for friends to see and begin to use as well.  This makes becoming healthier part of a social experience that is fun and exciting.  Another way to persuade people would be to make an instagram account that could upload pictures everyday of a featured relaxing getaway location. www.travel.usnews.com (2) features the 11 most relaxing vacation spots in the U.S. and explains what makes them so great.  If people are looking at pictures of vacations everyday then they won’t help but feel like they need a break from their stressful life and relax.  Instagram can also be linked up with twitter and facebook accounts to reach its fullest audience potential.  By constantly exposing people to these therapeutic lifestyle changes through social networking on social media sites, then people will hopefully be more likely to take action in their lives. 

 

 

 

Walsh, Roger. “Lifestyle and Mental Health.” American Psychologist 66.7 (2011): 579-92. Web. 15 Jan. 2013.

1) Superbetter. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.superbetter.com/

2) Best relaxing getaways in the usa. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://travel.usnews.com/Rankings/Best_Relaxing_Getaways_in_the_USA/