PAPER V: FINAL PAPER
FACEBOOK RUDENESS 2
Facebook Rudeness: How Comments May Affect One’s Attitude and Behavior
Maria V. Ortega
Florida International University
Methods
Participants
One hundred and forty-one students from Florida International University took part on this study, the participants were randomly selected. Of these 141 and participants, 48.2% (n=68) were male and 51.8% (n = 73) were female. Participant ages ranged from 18 to 40 with an average of 28.96 years (SD = 6.25). Our sample population for this study consisted of 88.7% Hispanic Americans (n = 125), 0.7% African Americans (n = 1), 4.3% Caucasians (n = 6), 5.7% Asians (n = 8), and 0.7% who were Native Indian (n = 1). About 50% of our participants reported English as their first language (n=71), while the other 50% did not report English as their first language (n=70).
Materials
Three surveys were presented and each of them contained five parts. For part one, participants were asked to look at a fake Facebook page of Corey McMillan who works for Coldwell Banker, along with some landscape photos as well as a dog, intro information and one post that McMillan recently made. Corey’s profile picture showed a couple, one male and one female, leading participants not to rely on gender norms while completing the survey.
The difference between each of the three surveys was that McMillan’s post fell into a agree/disagree condition (either rude disagree, polite disagree, or polite agree). In the condition for rude disagree, McMillan reported to not agree at all with other users’ comments, claiming in a rude way that everyone else’s arguments were wrong and that his news were not fake. In the condition for polite disagree, McMillan’s arguments were in a calm tone, without rudeness, he gave the other user’s credit for their arguments, even though he did not agree, in a polite and respectful way. In the polite agree condition, McMillan states that he was wrong about his most recent post, communicating his ideas in a polite and respectful way, he agreed with the other user’s argument.
In part two of the survey, participants were asked to rate their impressions of Corey by going over eight different statements and answering them through an interval scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). Some of these statement include “Corey seems like a reasonable person”, “Corey seems like a polite person”, “Corey seems like a rude person”, etc. In part three of the survey, seven statements were presented for participants to rate their impression of the comments that were posted on Facebook by Corey and the replies of other users, Peyton Halliburton, and Riley Anderson. Again, an interval scale was used, from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree), including statements such as “I think Peyton and Riley unfairly confronted Corey in their replies to Corey’s original post”, “Reading Corey’s last post made me feel angry”. “I would be willing to engage in a back-and-forth conversation with Corey”, etc. At the moment of creating our dependent variable, “negative impression”, we choose three statements from part three of the survey: “Reading Corey’s last post made me feel angry”, “After reading the comments, I believe the story of “CNN losing its news license” is fake”, “Before reading the comments, I suspected the story of “CNN losing its news license” was fake”, computing it by using the mean score from those participants’ “negative impression” by selecting those statements. As the scored for this variable where higher, the more participants agreed on negative statements, meaning they had a negative impression. For our second variable, “positive impression”, this dependent variable was based on the mean score of participants’ positive impression by selecting the following statements: “Corey seems like a likeable person”, “Corey seems like an open-minded person”, “Corey seems like a reasonable person”. If scores were to be high on this variable, that means participants had a good impression of Corey. Demographic information was asked in part four of the survey, including age, race, gender, first language, either if they were students at Florida International University or not and political affiliation. Participants were not required to answer all this questions, it was their right to leave any of them in blank if they refuse or felt uncomfortable when answering. Part five of the survey consisted on asking participants to recall how did Corey respond to the other users’ comments, Peyton and Riley, in order to tell if the participants were paying full attention when completing the survey.
Procedures
For this study, participants were chosen randomly from Florida International University. The approach was made via email and were asked through a zoom conference if they were willing to participate in this study. During this zoom conference, students were informed of the procedure for this study and how long it would take, also they were knowledgeable that would not experience any risk during this research study. At the time the participant’s consent was acquired, the three survey were randomly handed and they were asked to complete them in an independently way. Participants took approximately 10 minutes to complete the survey online.
Results
In this study, our independent variable was Facebook rudeness condition (rude disagree, polite disagree, polite agree) and whether participants recognized the condition they were in, was our dependent variable. We ran chi square test to check which results showed significance, X2(4) = 0.938, p <=0.919. 34.1%. Participants in the rude disagree condition agreed that Corey’s Facebook Rudeness seemed rude and 36.7% of the participants in the polite disagree condition agreed that Corey’s Facebook Rudeness seemed polite. Polite agree condition didn’t show any large effect.
Our main analysis, a One-Way ANOVA test for Facebook Rudeness condition (rude disagree, polite disagree, polite agree) as our independent variable and participant’s negative impression as our dependent variable. Results from this test showed a significant difference F(2, 138) = 3.160, p = .046 and our hypothesis was supported by a subsequent Tukey post hoc test, demonstrating that participants were more likely to agree on Corey’s rudeness in the rude disagree condition (M = 2.0227, SD = 0.82091) than in the polite disagree condition (M = 1.8542, SD = 0.7435). However, I significant difference resulted between the polite agree condition (M = 2.265, SD = 0.861) and the polite disagree condition. Results indicated that in situation where the outcome is polite agree, participants were more likely to have a positive impression from Corey.
Discussion
Our predictions were that participants in the rude disagree condition would score higher in the negative impression than those participants in the polite disagree and polite agree condition, so they would agree ore with the negative statements about Corey’s rudeness and disagree more with positive statements in comparison to participants in the rude disagree and polite agree condition. Also, we hypothesized that participants were more likely to agree on Corey’s rudeness in the rude disagree condition than in the polite condition.
Results supported our hypothesis, as we found that people in the rude disagree condition were more likely to score higher in the negative impression, so they feel Corey was not reasonable or either a polite person while those in the polite disagree condition would have a positive impression, feeling that Corey is an open minded and polite person when reading his comments. In order to dive in deeper and understand better Facebook rudeness, we decided to do some research on priming effects.
References
Spottswood, E. L., & Hancock, J. T. (2016). The positivity bias and prosocial deception on facebook. Computers in Human Behavior, 65, 252–259. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.08.019
Appendix A - Demographics – Study One
|
Statistics |
|||||
|
|
Gender |
Age |
Ethnicity |
||
|
N |
Valid |
141 |
141 |
141 |
|
|
|
Missing |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
|
Mean |
1.5177 |
28.9645 |
2.1489 |
||
|
Median |
2.0000 |
28.0000 |
2.0000 |
||
|
Mode |
2.00 |
24.00 |
2.00 |
||
|
Std. Deviation |
.50147 |
6.24890 |
.75533 |
||
|
Minimum |
1.00 |
18.00 |
1.00 |
||
|
Maximum |
2.00 |
40.00 |
5.00 |
||
|
Ethnicity |
|||||
|
|
Frequency |
Percent |
Valid Percent |
Cumulative Percent |
|
|
Valid |
Caucasian |
6 |
4.3 |
4.3 |
4.3 |
|
|
Hispanic American |
125 |
88.7 |
88.7 |
92.9 |
|
|
Native Indian |
1 |
.7 |
.7 |
93.6 |
|
|
African American |
1 |
.7 |
.7 |
94.3 |
|
|
Asian American |
8 |
5.7 |
5.7 |
100.0 |
|
|
Total |
141 |
100.0 |
100.0 |
|
|
Gender |
|||||
|
|
Frequency |
Percent |
Valid Percent |
Cumulative Percent |
|
|
Valid |
Male |
68 |
48.2 |
48.2 |
48.2 |
|
|
Female |
73 |
51.8 |
51.8 |
100.0 |
|
|
Total |
141 |
100.0 |
100.0 |
|
Appendix B – Crosstabs and Chi Square – Study One
|
Conditions(1 = A, 2 = B, 3 = C) * Impression (1 = A, 2 = B, 3 = C) Crosstabulation |
||||||
|
|
Impression |
Total |
||||
|
|
Rude Disagree |
Polite Disagree |
Polite Agree |
|
||
|
Condition(Rude disagree, polite disagree, polite agree) |
Rude Disagree |
Count |
13 |
16 |
15 |
44 |
|
|
|
% within Condition(Rude disagree, polite disagree, polite agree) |
29.5% |
36.4% |
34.1% |
100.0% |
|
|
Polite Disagree |
Count |
18 |
15 |
15 |
48 |
|
|
|
% within Condition(Rude disagree, polite disagree, polite agree) |
37.5% |
31.2% |
31.2% |
100.0% |
|
|
Polite Agree |
Count |
16 |
15 |
18 |
49 |
|
|
|
% within Condition(Rude disagree, polite disagree, polite agree) |
32.7% |
30.6% |
36.7% |
100.0% |
|
Total |
Count |
47 |
46 |
48 |
141 |
|
|
|
% within Condition(Rude disagree, polite disagree, polite agree) |
33.3% |
32.6% |
34.0% |
100.0% |
|
Chi-Square Tests |
||||||||
|
|
Value |
df |
Asymp. Sig. (2-sided) |
|||||
|
Pearson Chi-Square |
.938a |
4 |
.919 |
|||||
|
Likelihood Ratio |
.931 |
4 |
.920 |
|||||
|
Linear-by-Linear Association |
.000 |
1 |
.996 |
|||||
|
N of Valid Cases |
141 |
|
|
|||||
|
a. 0 cells (0.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 14.35.
Appendix C-ANOVA Negative Impression- Study One Descriptive |
||||||||
|
|
||||||||
|
|
N |
Mean |
Std. Deviation |
Std. Error |
95% Confidence Interval for Mean |
Minimum |
Maximum |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Lower Bound |
Upper Bound |
|
|
|
No |
44 |
2.0227 |
.82091 |
.12376 |
1.7731 |
2.2723 |
1.00 |
3.00 |
|
Sincere |
48 |
1.8542 |
.74347 |
.10731 |
1.6383 |
2.0700 |
1.00 |
3.00 |
|
Insincere |
49 |
2.2653 |
.86061 |
.12294 |
2.0181 |
2.5125 |
1.00 |
3.00 |
|
Total |
141 |
2.0496 |
.82225 |
.06925 |
1.9127 |
2.1865 |
1.00 |
3.00 |
|
ANOVA |
|||||
|
|
Sum of Squares |
df |
Mean Square |
F |
Sig. |
|
Between Groups |
4.145 |
2 |
2.073 |
3.160 |
.046 |
|
Within Groups |
90.507 |
138 |
.656 |
|
|
|
Total |
94.652 |
140 |
|
|
|
|
Multiple Comparisons |
||||||
|
(I) Condition(Rude disagree, polite disagree, polite agree) |
(J) Condition(Rude disagree, polite disagree, polite agree) |
Mean Difference (I-J) |
Std. Error |
Sig. |
95% Confidence Interval |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Lower Bound |
Upper Bound |
|
Rude Disagree |
Polite Disagree |
.16856 |
.16902 |
.580 |
-.2319 |
.5690 |
|
|
Polite Agree |
-.24258 |
.16820 |
.322 |
-.6411 |
.1559 |
|
Polite Disagree |
Rude Disagree |
-.16856 |
.16902 |
.580 |
-.5690 |
.2319 |
|
|
Polite Agree |
-.41114* |
.16446 |
.036 |
-.8008 |
-.0215 |
|
Polite Agree |
Rude Disagree |
.24258 |
.16820 |
.322 |
-.1559 |
.6411 |
|
|
Polite Disagree |
.41114* |
.16446 |
.036 |
.0215 |
.8008 |
|
*. The mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level. |