Does Facebook increase or decrease the amount of real social support you get?
big increase. From ABC: Defying some of the stereotypes of the digital age, social scientists say Facebook may actually be healthy for us. Keith Hampton at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania wrote a report for the Pew Research Center in which he found that "Internet users in general, but Facebook users even more so, have more close relationships than other people." "Facebook users get more overall social support, and in particular they report more…
1 min read
To make the best impression should you be totally honest or spin facts to make yourself look good?
..confidence is compelling because, barring evidence to the contrary, perceivers assume others have good self-insight. Therefore, to make the best impression, people should be as positive as is plausible to perceivers." Psychology theories disagree on the most effective self-presentation strategies—some claim possessing positive illusions is best, whereas others claim accuracy is best. The current experiments suggest that the role of perceivers and what perceivers believe has been underappreciated in this debate. Participants acted as recruiters for either a swim team…
1 min read
Is it worth reconnecting with old acquaintances on Facebook and Linked In?
solutely. People who reconnected with old friends on social networks got all the benefits usually associated with both weak and close relationships: The social networks literature suggests that ties must be maintained to retain value. In contrast, we show that reconnecting dormant ties – former ties, now out of touch – can be extremely useful. Our research prompted Executive MBA students to consult their dormant contacts about an important work project; outcomes compared favorably to those of their current ties. In addition, reconnecting previously strong ties led to…
1 min read
Is there a limit on how many friends you can have?
e theory of Dunbar's number says yes: Dunbar's number is suggested to be a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person.[1] Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restrictive rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's number. It has…
2 minutes
A Quick, Easy Trick For Getting People To Like You
socially optimistic. Expect that people will like you and they probably will. Via Psyblog: So this provides evidence that the acceptance prophecy holds true. In this experiment people who expected to be accepted did act more warmly towards a stranger and consequently they were perceived as more likeable. And: Social optimists, of course, are in the happy position of expecting to be accepted and finding that, generally speaking, they are. Social pessimists, though, face the dark side of what…
1 min read
How do you split a dinner bill with friends so as to optimize long term happiness?
a Dan Ariely's excellent book Predictably Irrational: Although identifying and fighting the allure of free! is important in order to avoid traps while we are making decisions, there are also some cases in which we can use free! to our advantage. Take, for example, the common experience of going to a restaurant with friends. When the server drops off the check at the end of a meal, people often scramble to figure out the norms for payment. Do we each pay for…
2 minutes
What are the top reasons for Facebook un-friending?
a Science Daily: After surveying more than 1,500 Facebook users on Twitter, Sibona found the number-one reason for unfriending is frequent, unimportant posts. "The 100th post about your favorite band is no longer interesting," he said. The second reason was posting about polarizing topics like religion and politics. "They say not to talk about religion or politics at office parties and the same thing is true online," he said. Inappropriate posts, such as crude or racist comments, were the third…
1 min read
Another way to improve your relationships:
om Eurekalert: Each student was asked to get a friend to participate in the study with them. Then each of the participants individually filled out an online survey. This included a list of "triggers"—descriptions of behaviors that someone might find annoying. One example was the word "skepticism" which was described as when someone is overly disbelieving of information that he/she receives, when he/she questions things that are generally accepted, or when he/she is very hard to convince of something. The…
1 min read
