PAPER V: FINAL PAPER

 

Social Comparison and Priming: How Social Media Posts Affect People’s Self Perception

Student Name

Florida International University

Methods

Participants

One hundred and seventy-nine participants took part on this study, out of which 91.6% (n=164) reported being students from Florida International University, while 8.4% (n=15) reported not being FIU students. Of these 179 participants 55.3% (n=99) were female and 44.7% (n=80) were male. Participants ranged in age from 17 to 59 with an average of 24.52 years (SD=7.71). Our sample consisted of 49.2% Hispanics (n=88), 24% Caucasians (n=43), 13.4% African Americans (n=24), 5% Asian American (n=9), 1.7% Native Indian (n=3), 5% Mixed race (n=9), and 1.7% Pacific Islander (n=3). Out of all our participants, 81.6% reported English as their first language (n=146), while 18.4% did not report their first language as English (n=33). Of these, 13.4% reported Spanish as their first language (n=24). See Appendix A.

Materials

Each of the three surveys contained five parts. In part one, participants looked at a fake Facebook profile of Pat Masters, an FIU student, along with some neutral general information, a made-up advertisement, a section for “Friends”, and four posts that Pat had recently made. Pat’s name was chosen as gender neutral, and the profile included a cover picture of FIU’s library, while the profile picture showed three people, one male and two females, so that participants did not rely on gender norms while completing the survey.

For each of the three surveys, the only difference was that two of Pat’s posts fell into a social comparison condition (either upward, downward, or average social comparison). In the condition for upward social comparison, Pat reported to have done extremely well in a job interview, claiming to have been considered the best candidate out of everyone else. In another post, Pat posts about receiving an A on a tough exam while most students in the class received a B. In the condition for downward social comparison, the job interview went really bad, stating he was not a good candidate, and Pat received a C on the tough exam while most students received a B. In the average social comparison, Pat states that he did ‘okay’ in the interview, being an ‘okay’ candidate, and he received a B on his tough exam while most students also received a B.

In part two of the survey participants had to rate their impressions of Pat Masters by reading seven statements and answering through an interval scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). Some examples of these statements include “Pat seems like a highly motivated person”, “Pat seems like a good job candidate”, “Pat seems like a likeable person”, etc. Part three of the study consisted of 13 statements where participants had to rate their level of agreement about themselves. Once again, an interval scale from 1(strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree) was used, and the statement included a mix of both positive self-statements: “I feel I am a very bright person”, “I feel I am a likeable person”, “I feel good about myself”, etc., and negative self-statements: “I feel inferiors to others at this moment”, “I feel like I have trouble understanding things”, and “I feel I am not doing well”. When creating our first dependent variable, we decided to call it ‘negative self-perception’, and we computed it using the mean score from participants’ negative self-views by selecting the following statements form part three of the survey: “I feel I am a lazy person”, “I feel inferior to others at this moment”, “I feel like I have trouble understanding things”, and “I feel like I’m not doing well”. The higher the score on this new variable, the more participants agreed about negative statements, meaning they felt worse about themselves . Our second dependent variable was called ‘positive self-esteem’, and it was based on the mean score for participants’ positive self-view by selecting the following statements: “I feel I am a very bright person”, “I feel I am (or will be) a good job candidate”, “I feel good about myself”, “I feel as smart as others”, and “I feel confident about my abilities”. A high score on this new variable would mean that participants felt good about themselves. Part four of the survey required to provide participants’ demographic information, which include gender, age, race or ethnicity, first language, their status as a student at Florida International University, and their current relationship status. In this part, participants were made aware of their right to leave any question blank if they did not feel comfortable answering it. Part five of the study consisted of a final question used as an attention check, which asked the participant to recall how Pat had done in the interview (great, bad, or okay) in order to tell if the participant was attentively completing the survey.

Procedures

Participants for this study were randomly chosen from the campus at Florida International University. They were approached in person and were orally asked if they were willing to participate in this research study. Participants were informed of how long the survey would take to complete, that they would experience no risks or discomforts from the study, and they were reminded that participation was voluntary. Once verbal consent was obtained, participants were randomly given one out of three surveys and they independently read and answered the questions on their questionnaire. It took them approximately 5 minutes to complete and they answered the questions on paper and pencil. The end of the study consisted of the debriefing of the participants, where they became aware of our hypothesis on the effect of social comparison in social media.

Results

In this survey, social comparison condition (upward, downward, or average) was our independent variable and whether or not the participants recognized which condition they were in was our dependent variable. We then ran a chi square test as a manipulation check which showed significant results, X2(4) = 275.2, p < .001. Most participants in the upward social comparison condition reported that Pat did great in the interview (94.9%), most participants in the downward condition recalled he did bad (91.6%), and most of those in the average condition said he did ‘okay’ (88.3%). This shows that participants were paying attention when reading Pat’s posts on the survey. See Appendix B.

Our first analysis consisted of a One-Way ANOVA Test for social comparison condition (upward, downward, or average) as our independent variable and participants’ negative self-perception as our dependent variable. Results from this test showed a significant difference F(2, 176) = 25.7, p < .001 and Tukey post hoc tests showed that participants felt worse about themselves in the upward social comparison condition (M = 3.94, SD = 0.61) than in the downward social comparison condition (M = 3.12, SD = 0.74). Results showed that those in the average social comparison condition (M = 3.48, SD = 0.49) also felt worse about themselves than people in the downward condition. See Appendix C.

Our second analysis was another One-Way ANOVA Test, this time using social comparison condition (upward, downward, or average) as our independent variable and participants’ positive self-esteem as our dependent variable. Results showed a significant difference F(2, 176) = 45.7, p < .001. Tukey post hoc tests showed that participants felt better about themselves in the downward social comparison condition (M = 4.81, SD = 0.48) than in the upward (M = 4.08, SD = 0.38) social comparison condition. Also, those in the average (M = 4.48, SD = 0.38) condition felt better about themselves than participants in the upward social comparison condition. See Appendix D.

Discussion

Our predictions were that participants in the upward social comparison condition would score higher in negative self-perception than participants in the downward and average social comparison condition, so they would agree more with negative statements about themselves and disagree more with positive statements compared to participants in the downward and average social comparison condition. In addition, we hypothesized that participants in the downward social comparison would score higher in positive self-esteem and lower in negative self-perception when compared to those in the upward and average social comparison.

Our results supported our hypothesis as we found that people in the downward social comparison condition were more likely to score higher in positive self-esteem, so they felt better when reading about the outcomes of someone who was doing bad, while those in the upward condition would feel worse about themselves when reading about someone who was doing great as they were more likely to score higher in negative self-perception. These findings support the idea behind other studies on the matter, which state that upward social comparison can negatively affect people’s views of themselves (Liu et al., 2016). To better understand social comparison, we wanted to dive deeper and see what would happen if participants were informed about the effects of social comparison before being administered the survey, so we decided to do some research on priming effects.

References

Liu, J., Li, C., Carcioppolo, N., & North, M. (2016). Do our facebook friends make us feel worse? A study of social comparison and emotion. Human Communication Research, 42(4), 619-640. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.fiu.edu/10.1111/hcre.12090

Appendix A – Study One – Demographics

Statistics

	Gender (1 = M, 2 = F)	Age	Race	FIU Student (1 = Y, 2 = N)
N	Valid	179	179	179	179
	Missing	0	0	0	0
Mean	1.5531	24.5251	2.4637	1.0838
Median	2.0000	22.0000	2.0000	1.0000
Mode	2.00	21.00	2.00	1.00
Std. Deviation	.49857	7.71495	1.45439	.27786
Kurtosis	-1.976	6.505	.305	7.259
Std. Error of Kurtosis	.361	.361	.361	.361
Minimum	1.00	17.00	1.00	1.00
Maximum	2.00	59.00	6.00	2.00

Race
	Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent
Valid	Caucasian	43	24.0	24.0	24.0
	Hispanic	88	49.2	49.2	73.2
	Native Indian	3	1.7	1.7	74.9
	African American	24	13.4	13.4	88.3
	Asian American	9	5.0	5.0	93.3
	Other	12	6.7	6.7	100.0
	Total	179	100.0	100.0

Race Other
	Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent
Valid		167	93.3	93.3	93.3
	Mixed	9	5.0	5.0	98.3
	Pacific Islander	3	1.7	1.7	100.0
	Total	179	100.0	100.0

English (1 = Y, 2 = N)
	Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent
Valid	Yes	146	81.6	81.6	81.6
	No	33	18.4	18.4	100.0
	Total	179	100.0	100.0

English Other
	Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent
Valid		146	81.6	81.6	81.6
	Creole	3	1.7	1.7	83.2
	Samoan	3	1.7	1.7	84.9
	Spanish	24	13.4	13.4	98.3
	Yoruba	3	1.7	1.7	100.0
	Total	179	100.0	100.0

FIU Student (1 = Y, 2 = N)
	Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent	Cumulative Percent
Valid	Yes	164	91.6	91.6	91.6
	No	15	8.4	8.4	100.0
	Total	179	100.0	100.0

Appendix B – Crosstabs and Chi Square – Study One

Condition (1 = U, 2 = D, 3 = A) * Attention Check (1 = U, 2 = D, 3 = A) Crosstabulation
Count
	Attention Check (1 = U, 2 = D, 3 = A)	Total
	Upward	Downward	Average
Condition (1 = U, 2 = D, 3 = A)	Upward	56	3	0	59
	Downward	4	55	1	60
	Average	4	3	53	60
Total	64	61	54	179

Chi-Square Tests
	Value	df	Asymp. Sig. (2-sided)
Pearson Chi-Square	275.228a	4	.000
Likelihood Ratio	276.479	4	.000
Linear-by-Linear Association	140.577	1	.000
N of Valid Cases	179
a. 0 cells (0.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 17.80.

Appendix C – ANOVA Negative Self-perception – Study One

Descriptives
DV1_Negative
	N	Mean	Std. Deviation	Std. Error	95% Confidence Interval for Mean	Minimum	Maximum
					Lower Bound	Upper Bound
Upward	59	3.9449	.61775	.08042	3.7839	4.1059	2.25	5.00
Downward	60	3.1250	.74290	.09591	2.9331	3.3169	1.75	4.75
Average	60	3.4875	.48587	.06273	3.3620	3.6130	2.25	4.50
Total	179	3.5168	.70591	.05276	3.4126	3.6209	1.75	5.00

ANOVA
DV1_Negative
	Sum of Squares	df	Mean Square	F	Sig.
Between Groups	20.076	2	10.038	25.744	.000
Within Groups	68.624	176	.390
Total	88.700	178

Multiple Comparisons
Dependent Variable: DV1_Negative Bonferroni
(I) Condition (1 = U, 2 = D, 3 = A)	(J) Condition (1 = U, 2 = D, 3 = A)	Mean Difference (I-J)	Std. Error	Sig.	95% Confidence Interval
					Lower Bound	Upper Bound
Upward	Downward	.81992*	.11449	.000	.5432	1.0966
	Average	.45742*	.11449	.000	.1807	.7341
Downward	Upward	-.81992*	.11449	.000	-1.0966	-.5432
	Average	-.36250*	.11400	.005	-.6381	-.0869
Average	Upward	-.45742*	.11449	.000	-.7341	-.1807
	Downward	.36250*	.11400	.005	.0869	.6381
*. The mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level.

Appendix D – ANOVA Positive Self-esteem – Study One

Descriptives
DV2_Positive
	N	Mean	Std. Deviation	Std. Error	95% Confidence Interval for Mean	Minimum	Maximum
					Lower Bound	Upper Bound
Upward	59	4.0847	.37546	.04888	3.9869	4.1826	3.40	5.00
Downward	60	4.8092	.48077	.06207	4.6850	4.9334	3.80	5.80
Average	60	4.4833	.37605	.04855	4.3862	4.5805	3.60	5.60
Total	179	4.4612	.50732	.03792	4.3863	4.5360	3.40	5.80

ANOVA
DV2_Positive
	Sum of Squares	df	Mean Square	F	Sig.
Between Groups	15.656	2	7.828	45.684	.000
Within Groups	30.157	176	.171
Total	45.813	178

Multiple Comparisons
Dependent Variable: DV2_Positive Bonferroni
(I) Condition (1 = U, 2 = D, 3 = A)	(J) Condition (1 = U, 2 = D, 3 = A)	Mean Difference (I-J)	Std. Error	Sig.	95% Confidence Interval
					Lower Bound	Upper Bound
Upward	Downward	-.72442*	.07589	.000	-.9079	-.5410
	Average	-.39859*	.07589	.000	-.5820	-.2151
Downward	Upward	.72442*	.07589	.000	.5410	.9079
	Average	.32583*	.07557	.000	.1432	.5085
Average	Upward	.39859*	.07589	.000	.2151	.5820
	Downward	-.32583*	.07557	.000	-.5085	-.1432
*. The mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level.

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