Final Paper

Facebook Consensus

Kaytlin De Los Santos

PSY 3215

07/20/2020

Methods

Participants

One hundred and forty-four participants in the sample. Of these 75 were males (51%) and 69 were female (46%). Sample ages ranged from 18 to 72 (M = 24.84, SD = 8.48). This included 29% Caucasian (N = 44), 45% Hispanic (N = 67), 1% Native Indian (N = 2), 11% African American (N = 17), 4% Asian American (N = 7), and 6% of participants reporting “Other” (N =10). See Table 1.

Materials and procedures

As per the informed consent guidelines, the potential respondents for the survey were made aware of the advantages of taking part in the research as well as the risks that come with this action prior to being given the material for the research. The participants who agreed to be part of the research were issued with a document containing five sections. They would analyze a Facebook post on a charity event and thus respond to the survey based on their perspectives. The survey begins by presenting a post from Facebook about a fundraising event and a few of the comments given by the friends of the individual who has posted it.

After reviewing the post made by Michael Benzjian appealing to the well-wishers to take part in his birthday fundraiser to help children in need, the student would be required to answer the part II questions assuming they had been given $100. This part requires then to answer how much amount they would donate to the charity, how much of the available money would other individuals donate, as well as answer the amount of their time instead of money would dedicate to charity.

Part III of the survey requires the participants to rate the post regarding the page itself and Michael. They would use their perspective to give ratings (Strongly Disagree 1 to Strongly Agree 6) of the various conclusions which can be made from this posting. Part IV requires participants to fill their personal information such as gender, age, race/ethnicity, first language, if they are a student at FIU, and their relationship status. The final part, part V, asks the participants to make their judgement based from what they remembered reading in the post, how much they think Michael’s friends contributed.

Results

The results of the part III of the survey are that most participants indicated lower (M = 2.90) and higher (M = 2.22) ratings for the survey on whether the friends of Michael are stingy. A huge group indicates their viewpoints which display that the general ratings made by these individuals state that the donations made are very low and thus these individuals are only giving a small percentage of what they have. There is a very small significance difference indicated (Sig = 0.006, F = 5.37) between groups meaning that the donations considered high, low and medium has very limited differences. Finally, we ran multiple comparisons to determine the perceptions of people regarding donating money and the availability of money. See Table 4.

Discussion

We made predictions that the respondents would be highly likely to donate more when they had money available and this led to their perception of classifying the people involved in this scenario as stingy. In addition, most of them gave low rating to statement displaying that Michael’s friends were caring since their contributions are very low. Considering that this decision of helping children is a noble quest, most participants seemed willing to give up most of the income they could get for the operations. Consequently, it was forecasted that individuals who were willing to give up less of the money they had to donate to children in need, would be less judgement all and would rate low ratings to statements such as friend of Michael are stingy while rating highly the statements indicating that Michael’s friends are caring. The findings support these predictions as most individuals who preferred to donate less stated that the friends of Michael are caring and are in no way stingy. The individuals who ought to donate an average amount of the $100 mostly were indifferent in that some thought that the individuals in the scenario are stingy and caring while others thought they were not.

The main reason for variance in the results is the difference in how participants viewed the matter at hand. Some thought that it was far better to give up money and help a child out there whereas had a viewpoint that it would be crucial to give up less and save more for themselves. The personal opinions of people on various matters especially when it comes to kindness and generosity could have created the gap between their capabilities to donate.

Table 1

Demographics Study One

Table 2

Crosstabs and Chi Square – Study One

Table 3

ANOVA Donation Amount – Study One

Table 4

ANOVA Friends Stingy – Study One

Table 5

ANOVA Friends Care – Study One