materials and procedure

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CONFORMITY AND PEER EFFECTS ON FACEBOOK

Consensus: Conformity and Peer Effects on Facebook

Maria C Daza

Abstract

With the use of social network services like Facebook, people have the possibility to post status updates for their peers to read. In turn, peers respond to this comment with their thoughts and opinions. Making use of a survey several studies were run looking at how participants respond to a cheating scenario by showing two different gender (Abigail/Adam) Facebook page that contains the user’s confession to cheating in an exam followed by different feedback comments from their peers. We distinguish between three different treatment conditions: opposed feedback, supported feedback and mixed feedback. Whereas the first condition

a). your research questions,

b). your participants, study one 140, study two 200

c). your experimental methodology,

d). your findings,

and e). your conclusions.

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Keywords: consensus, gender, conformity, Facebook feedback, peers, unanimity

Consensus: Conformity and Peer Effects on Facebook

Social media refers to websites and applications that are designed to allow people to share content quickly, efficiently, and in real-time (Hudson, 2019). Social sharing refers to the act of spreading content on a social media platform to one’s peers, groups, or chosen individuals. To share photos, opinions and events for our family and peers to read has changed the way we live now a days. All this technology has made it easier for anyone to create a profile and post their opinion in any social media for our friends or anyone who feels related to comment, like or shared their opinion. Social media usage is one of the most popular online activities and in 2019, 79 percent of the population in the United States had a social networking profile, representing a two percent increase from the 77 percent usage reach in the previous year. This equals approximately 247 million U.S. social media users as of 2019 (Clement, 2019). Most people share their personal experiences, feelings and thoughts, but at the same time your exposed for a controversial respond. The good things about social media is that you also have the ability to choose who to share your opinion. The most famous social medias are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. In each of these social medias mentioned before you can post anything that you want and get a reply back by who you choose to share it with. Also, people can share your comments and their social media family and peers can read it and comment on it. Some of your posts might go viral and there might be a negative, positive or mixed effect related to your post.

Facebook is one of the most famous social media worldwide. That was one of my first social media back in 2006, I was 16 years old. I remember it was a new way to communicate with our friends and family. It was very easy; we will comment on each other walls and get replies back from friends. Facebook has 2.45 billion monthly active users (Facebook, 2019). If that number doesn’t blow you away, it also has 1.62 billion users that are visiting the social networking site on a daily basis (Mohsin, et al., 2020). Facebook is also the owner of other leading social medias such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. Facebook also has its negative side like creating face Facebook profiles and cyberbullying others, sexual harassment, fraud and much more. We need to be careful who we accept as friends and that content that we share because 60 percent of 50 to 60-year old are active on social media and 18-29- year-olds have an 89% usage (Mohsin, et al., 2020).

Conformity can be as a change in behavior, internal views or attitudes caused by social influence and group pressures (Hogg and Vaughan, 2014). Pressures to conform arise from social norms, which reflect the values or desired circumstances of a wider, social group (Smith, Mackie & Claypool, 2014). Achieving social norms of a group, individuals can conform in one of two, primary ways: by compliance or internalization. Compliance is where an individual conforms to a majority despite no internal change in belief, meaning the change is temporary and exists for the benefit of a social group (Hogg and Vaughan, 2014). As a result, when an individual is not being observed or surveyed by the group in question, their behaviors may revert to reflect themselves more accurately. However, internalization is where an individual conforms to a social norm, but experiences an additional, internal change in their attitudes and actions, meaning the desired behavior exists regardless of the presence of a majority (Hogg and Vaughan, 2014).

Study One

The study also analyzes that students who cheat on their exams risk more than their grades. According to Rettinger and other researchers, students who cheat can still see themselves as principled people by rationalizing cheating for reasons they see as legitimate (Simmons, 2018). In general, we predict that participants who read unanimously supportive feedback will rate the Facebook user’s conduct as more acceptable than participants who read unanimously oppositional feedback, with those who read mixed feedback falling between these extremes. (NEEDS MORE WORK)

Methods Study One

Participants

There were one hundred and forty students from Florida International University, whom were randomly selected for this study. In this study sample, 73, 52.1% were female (N = 2), and 62, 44.3% were female (N = 1), while 5 participants (mixed gender: male and female) 3.6%. The participants’ age ranged 17 to 45 (M = 23.08, SD = 4.91). Our sample population consisted of 25.7% Caucasian (N= 36), 40.0% Hispanic (N=56), 2.1% Native Indian (N= 3), 17.1% African American (N= 24), 6.4% Asian American (N=9) and 8.6% who did not specify their identity (N=12). See Appendix A.

Materials and Procedure

Since this study was adherent to the principles of informed consent, all the participating students were informed about the risks associated with handling the involved materials. As such, the research materials containing the questionnaires were presented to them and the benefits of the study explained to them before they could open the documents. Each of the students verbally consented to participate and was accorded a document that contained three sections as defined by each condition under assessment. Besides, the document contained Abigail’s post in Facebook, and it was incumbent upon the partakers to decide whether they supported, opposed, or showed mixed reaction (support, oppose, mixed).

In the support condition against the background of the question “Abigail’s behavior was wrong,” the idea is to seek the support that Abigail actually cheated in her statistics exam. Following her post in Facebook, those who vote for “support” invalidate Abigail’s behavior. In the oppose condition, those who think that Abigail did the right thing will offer her a great level of approval. They are opposed to the statement that “Abigail behavior was wrong.” Last, those who lack the view on whether Abigail was right or wrong will vote in the “mixed” condition category.

After understanding the situation, the participants were presented with close-ended questions. These questions pertained to the situation that was earlier presented to the participants. They were required to respond based on the scale provided. The first question involved whether the Abigail’s behavior was wrong (strongly disagree = 1 and strongly agree = 6). All the other subsequent questions followed exactly the same scale. In the end, it was possible to collect the required data.

Results Study One

Using consensus condition (support vs. opposed vs. mixed) as our independent variable and whether participants recalled the comments in the survey consensus as our dependent variable. In the manipulation check using the Chi-square, this helped to achieve X 2(4, N= 140) = 147.04, p < .001. (82.2%) were the participants that supported her feedback, (81.4%) were the participants that opposed her feedback, and (81.3%) were the participants that had a mixed feedback. This means that there were more participants supporting her behavior. See appendix B.

For our main analysis, our first One-Way ANOVA revealed a statistically significant difference between groups, the independent variable (support, opposed, mixed) and our dependent variable, Abigail’s behavior was wrong, (F (2,133) = 5.811, p=.004). A Tukey post-hoc test was done showing that there was a significant difference between the groups who either mixed (M = 3.80, SD = 0.99) or opposed (M = 3.95, SD = 0.95) Abigail's behavior than supported (M = 3.32, SD = 0.73). See appendix C.

Finally, we ran independent sample t-test with support and oppose conditions only and “ I would give Abigail the same advice” as the dependent variable, which was statistically significant relationship between a person’s willingness to give Abigail the same advice her friends gave her and whether they supported or opposed her, with t (89) =-.335, p=.386. See appendix D.

Discussion Study One

The study established that Abigail’s behavior was wrong. In doing the Facebook post analysis, it was found that some people were unimpressed with Abigail’s behavior. As the world progress people are more open-minded, this makes things like cheating, normal and people were unimpressed about her actions. Also, we need to differentiate about good and bad things, that’s where our parents’ values come in put them to use in doing the correct thing even if it means getting a bad grade. I know that doing the right thing sometimes is hard, there is too many things at risk by fear of losing something we really want to achieve we make bad decisions and we don’t thing on anyone else but ourselves and things like this happened. She should have avoided cheating and hence allow the fellow students to perform and get graded based on the overall score in the class. (NEED TO WORK ON THIS)

Study Two

Gender inequality

Methods Study Two

Participants

Two hundred subjects were recruited to participate in the study. Among this group, 41.0% were male participants (N = 82), 56.5% were female participants (N = 113), and 1.5% preferred not to indicate their gender. (N = 3) Two out of the chosen sample subjects were excluded from the analysis because of inconsistent response data provided. The demographics distribution among the selected participants was identified as 14% for the Caucasian population (N = 28), 61.5% for Hispanic population (N = 123), 19% African-American population (N= 38), 4% for non-specified demographic groups (N = 8), and less than 1% for the Native Indians (N = 1). See Appendix E.

Materials and Procedure

Results Study Two

A Chi Square test was run to examine the relationship between the two cheating genders (Abigail/Adam). Going by the results of the Chi Square, X 2(2, N= 200) = 105.93, p < .001. With p at this value, there is a clear statistical significance. Cramer’s V, which is appropriate for this 3 X 3 test, was extraordinarily strong. These findings indicate that participants saw our original study outcome manipulation as we intended. See appendix F.

To test our first dependent variable, we ran a 2 X 2 ANOVA with gender (male vs. female) and comment condition (support vs. mixed) as our independent variable and the statement “Their behavior was appropriate” as our dependent variable. Results demonstrated that there was not a statistically significant relationship between viewer gender and comment type F(1,196) = .761, p=.384. There is not much of a difference between the Male Facebook Cheater comment condition (M = 4.56, SD = 0.67) and Female Facebook Cheater comment condition (M = 4.58, SD = 0.59. There was more supportive comment condition in Male Facebook Cheater (M = 5.11, SD = 0.31) than in Female Facebook Cheater (M = 4.03, SD = 0.33). There was more mixed comment condition in Female Facebook Cheater (M= 4.06, SD = 0.24) than in Male Facebook Cheater (M = 4.00, SD = 0.40). As you can observe between the comment conditions (support vs. mixed) there is a slight difference in both. Also, there was no effect between comment condition, gender condition and “Their behavior was appropriate” F(1,196) = .076, p = .38. But we found a significantly effect in the comment condition on “Their behavior was appropriate” F(1, 196) = 554.89, p = .00. See appendix G.

To test our second dependent variable, we ran a 2 X 2 ANOVA with gender (male vs. female) and comment condition (support vs. mixed) as our independent variable and another statement “Their behavior was immoral” as our dependent variable. Results demonstrated that there was not a statistically significant effect on gender condition F(1,196) = .761, p=.384. There is not much of a difference between the Male Facebook Cheater comment condition (M = 4.15, SD = 1.27) and Female Facebook Cheater comment condition (M = 3.87, SD = 1.27). There was more supportive comment condition in Male Facebook Cheater (M = 4.22, SD = 1.33) than in Female Facebook Cheater (M =3.98, SD = 1.24). There was more mixed comment condition in Male Facebook Cheater (M= 4.08, SD = 1.22) than in Female Facebook Cheater (M = 3.76, SD = 1.30). As you can observe participants in the support comment condition (M = 4.10, SD = 1.28) established that the behavior of the Facebook user was more immoral than the participants in the mixed comment condition (M = 3.92, SD = 1.27). There was no effect between comment condition, gender condition and “Their behavior was immoral” F(1,196) = 1.00 p = .33. Also, there no statistically significant relationship shown in comment condition and gender, as F (1,196) = 0.49, p=.825. See appendix H.

Discussion Study Two

NEED TO WORK ON THIS

General Discussion

NEED TO WORK ON THIS

References

Hudson, M. (2019, May 8). Learn What Social Media Is and How to Use It to Grow Your Business. Retrieved from https://www.thebalancesmb.com/what-is-social-media-2890301

Clement, J. (2019, August 9). U.S. population with a social media profile 2019. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/273476/percentage-of-us-population-with-a-social-network-profile/

Mohsin, M., Mohsin, M., Mohsin, M., Mohsin, M., Mohsin, M., & Mohsin, M. (2020, April 3). Top 10 Facebook Stats You Need to Know in 2020 [Infographic]. Retrieved from https://www.oberlo.com/blog/facebook-statistics

Hogg, M. & Vaughan, G. M. (2014). Social Psychology. 7th ed. Harlow, England: Pearson.

Smith, E.R., Mackie, D.M. & Claypool, H.M. (2014). Social Psychology. 4th ed. Hoboken, NJ: Taylor and Francis

Appendix A – Demographics – Study One

Appendix B – Crosstabs and Chi-Square – Study One

Appendix C – ANOVA “Abigail’s behavior was wrong” – Study One

Appendix D – t-Test “I would give Abigail the same advice” – Study One

Appendix E – Demographics – Study Two

Appendix F – Crosstabs and Chi Square – Study Two

Appendix G – ANOVA “Their behavior was appropriate” – Study Two

Appendix H – ANOVA “Their behavior was immoral” – Study Two