We are happy to announce that our first project paper, titled as “Emotional Responses of Browsing Facebook: Happiness, Envy, and Tie Strength), is now published in Computers and Human Behavior (download here)!
The paper examines the emotional responses (both positive and negative) of browsing Facebook, and how these are influenced by tie strength (relationship closeness between the reader and poster).
Social news on Facebook is often very positive: people mainly post holiday pictures, social activities with friends or family, achievements, etc. Reading these posts can make Facebook users feel happy. But, other studies suggest that they can also trigger envious feelings. Along these lines, recent media reports have also raised concerns about the negative effects of browsing Facebook, i.e., warning us that if we look at peoples’ happy pictures and posts, we might be envious about their seemingly perfect lives and this could lead to negative psychological outcomes such as depression. The good news is, our research suggests that this is not always the case. We found that positive emotions are more prevalent than negative emotions when browsing Facebook. Also, tie strength plays a role in predicting these emotions.
We conducted two studies. The first study was an online survey. We asked Facebook users to rate the four most recent posts in their News Feeds: how positive the content is, how close they are to the person who wrote the post, and how they felt while/after reading the post. In general, our respondents reported more positive emotions (happiness) rather than negative emotions (envy). Also, they were happier after read a post from a best friend compared to a post from a loose acquaintance.
The second study was an online experiment. We designed several posts that may trigger envy, including one of a vacation picture. We manipulated the tie strength, and asked participants to imagine the post comes from either a strong tie, mid tie, or weak tie (depending on condition). Further, these ties that participants imagined were real people (i.e., they imagined a real strong tie / close friend that they actually know). In addition to the degree of happiness, we also measured the degree of malicious and benign envy after each scenario.
Again, a similar pattern was observed: when participants viewed the potentially envy-inducing posts, they experienced more happiness than envy. Tie strength again mattered—participants were happier if the post was made by a close friend. Revisiting the envy question (does Facebook make you envious?): In both studies, participants did report experiencing envy, however, it was usually benign envy, as opposed to the more hostile form of envy (malicious envy). Benign envy usually leads to motivation (working harder to obtain similar achievements as those who we envy), whereas malicious envy is more hostile (wanting those we are envious of to lose their achievements). Thus, when our close friends post a vacation picture we might feel somewhat envious, but in a way that makes us want to work harder to enjoy similar pursuits. With malicious envy, we might be more likely to wish that something bad happens on the vacation, but this was really not common in our study. When participants did report malicious envy, it was usually those with a more envious personality.
Overall, our studies showed that there are more positive emotions than negative emotions: Facebook users are happy with their social news on Facebook, especially when the posts come from strong ties; and, if there is any envy triggered by those positive posts, it is more likely to be benign envy, with a motivation of moving up. We hope these findings can contribute to the construction of a better online-communication environment and eventually improve the individual well-being of social media users.
