Facebook Reduces One’s Motivation to Increase Confidence, Research Confirmed

Facebook Reduces One’s Motivation to Increase Confidence, Research Confirmed

By Julie S | Jun 02, 2013 11:14 PM EDT


Facebook Reduces Ones Motivation to Increase Confidence, Research Confirmed


Facebook helps boost a person's self-confidence thus reducing one's motivation to increase it in other ways. This is the conclusion of a study published in the journal Media Psychology titled 'Self-affirmation underlies Facebook users'.

Catalina Toma, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of communication arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studied the possible positive and negative psychological effects of Facebook to its users.  

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The journal did not specify the number of people who participated in the test but the team used the 'Implicit Association Test' to gather data. This test is used by social psychologists to measure a person's automatic response when presented with objects. In the study, the research team used Facebook as the object.

Each participant was asked to look at their online profile in Facebook before taking the test. They were then asked to come up with positive or negative adjectives that they can associate with the words 'me' and 'myself'. The results of the test revealed a significant improvement on the confidence level of the participants stimulated by their social networking profiles.

That is the positive psychological effect of Facebook.

Now for the negative psychological effect, the research team asked the participants countdown large numbers by intervals of seven. They were then evaluated based on their speed and accuracy while responding. This is a simple task but the team observed a significant decrease in motivation.

The research team concluded that Facebook boosts the confidence of the participants thus they are not motivated anymore to perform other tasks that can further boost their confidence. This is aligned with the 'self-affirmation theory'. The theory explains how people react to threats by diverting their attention to other areas which they feel competent as their own defense mechanism.



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