A Facebook profile is an idealized version of the self, which offers beneficial psychological effects and influences behavior, according to a new study. This is the first study of its kind that uses social psychology research toll to examine the effects of the social networking site.

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The study, conducted by UW-Madison assistant professor Catalina Toma, measured Facebook users' self-esteem with the help of the Implicit Association Test. Self-esteem was measured after the users spent time looking at their profiles. The researchers noticed that participants experienced a major boost in self-esteem after spending five minutes examining their own Facebook profiles.

This test helps in measuring the rate at which participants link positive and negative adjectives with words like ''I'', ''me''  and ''myself''.

According to Toma, if someone has high self-esteem, they can quickly link words related to themselves with positive evaluations; but at the same time, they experience difficulty in associating words relating to themselves with negative evaluations.

Further, the researcher investigated whether behavior is affected when the person is exposed to his/her own Facebook profile.

Based on the participant's reaction in a serial subtraction test, Toma examined their behavior. She assessed how quickly and accurately they could count down large numbers by intervals of seven. Toma noticed that the self-esteem boost that followed after viewing their profile eventually reduced their performance in the task, by decreasing their motivation to do well.

After spending time on their profile, they managed to answer just a few questions in a specific time frame, when compared to the control group. But there was not much difference in the error rate. She found that the result was consistent with the self-affirmation theory, which states that people continuously try to control their feelings of self-worth.

"This study shows that exposure to your own Facebook profile reduces motivation to perform well in a simple, hypothetical task," Toma said in a news statement. "It does not show that Facebook use negatively affects college students' grades, for example. Future work is necessary to investigate the psychological effects of other Facebook activities, such as examining others' profiles or reading the newsfeed."

The study will be published in Media Psychology.