Running head: FACEBOOK FEEDBACKS AND ITS INFLUENCE 1

Facebook Feedbacks Influence the Perceptions of the users- A Study.

Gabriela Gonzalez

Florida International University.

FACEBOOK FEEDBACKS AND ITS INFLUENCE 2

Facebook Feedbacks Influence the Perceptions of the users- A Study.

Introduction

Facebook acts as a great platform to connect with the people all over the globe. Within a decade,

it has completely revolutionized the lives of people connected through Facebook. It is widely

used in almost every aspect such as politics, academics, industries, etc. People posts pictures,

news, thoughts, and many more. Nearly three billion people or we can say that around 40%

population is currently using online social media (Brown, 2018). According to the reports, on

average, an individual is spending more than two hours every day, sharing, liking, reacting and

updating their profiles and around five hundred thousand of tweets and photos are posted on

Facebook every minute (Brown, 2018). The usage of social media is strongly connected with the

user's age. People between age group 18-29 have always been the most likely users of social

media (Perrin, 2015). The percentage of youth using social media has considerably increased

from 12% in 2005 to 90% in 2015, almost a 78% increase which surely has risen today (Perrin,

2015).

This has resulted in people picturizing in their minds what they see on Facebook and

began to judge them accordingly. Since a lot of people are using Facebook, News channels and

political parties have also created their Facebook pages to know the moods of the people before

elections. People tend to like pictures and posts that contains greater likes and ignores those who

have got only a few likes (Sherman, Payton, Hernandez, Greenfield & Dapretto, 2016).

This means that people generally tend to make an opinion about the post or picture based

upon the likes and types of comments it has received. The present study tries to determine if

Facebook feedbacks that seems to support or oppose cheating impacts how participants
FACEBOOK FEEDBACKS AND ITS INFLUENCE 3

perceived that cheating. That is, will Facebook feedbacks that appear to support a friend who

cheat on exam, influence how participants perceive that cheating.

Literature review

Cyberbullying has been an intense problem on Facebook in which the user directs posts

and comments on a picture in order to harass someone. This cyberbullying has severe effects

such as social isolation and risk of depression in the victim. A study was conducted by Anderson,

Bresnahan and Musatics (2014) to determine how social support for the victim through

dissenting comments, can change the perception of bystanders. In this study, the experimenter

took 190 students as participants and 181 entered the portal link, out of which, 97 were men and

84 were women, of age group 18-24 (Anderson, Bresnahan & Musatics, 2014). The participants

were made exposed to a fictional Facebook page of a girl named Jessica, an obese girl, sitting on

a chair holding chips in her hand. The independent variable in this study was the three versions

of this Facebook page, one modelled as conformity, one as dissent, and the other without

comments and the participants were asked to post their own comments on this Facebook page.

The experimenter assumes the hypothesis that participants in the dissent group will be more

positive than comments posted by the conformity or control group questions and tries to

determine if the gender of the participant has something to do with the type of comment posted

by him (Anderson, Bresnahan & Musatics, 2014).

The results of this study showed that participants who were exposed to dissenting

conditions posts more positive comments with a mean of 3.42 and standard deviation of 0.121,

than those in the conformity (M=2.80 and S.D= 1.33 or the control group (M=2.98 and

SD=1.22). (Anderson, Bresnahan & Musatics, 2014). It was also shown in the study that people's

empathy towards the victim of cyberbullying is not associated with the dissenting or conformity
FACEBOOK FEEDBACKS AND ITS INFLUENCE 4

conditions (Anderson, Bresnahan & Musatics, 2014). Moreover, the study found that

cyberbullying varies according to gender with women posting more negative comments as

compared to men (Anderson, Bresnahan & Musatics, 2014). also, it was found that men who

were in the control group considers Jessica severely unhealthy while men in the dissenting

conditions founds her less unhealthy. On the other hand, women in the conformity condition

considered Jessica much unhealthy as compared to women in the other group (Anderson,

Bresnahan & Musatics, 2014). “Male perpetrators of weight-based bullying typically use teasing

or direct verbal bullying, whereas women typically use relational forms of victimization like

social isolation” (Anderson, Bresnahan & Musatics, 2014).

People in this globalized world has now a tendency to judge each and everything they

encountered, and they generally put their opinion after knowing what others think about the

same. In a study on effects of comments on news sites and YouTube, it was shown that negative

user statements have more persuasive effects than positive user statements (Winter, Brückner &

Krämer, 2015). This means that negative comments can vanish the persuasive effects of

renowned articles published by the news channels. Winter, Bruckner and Kramer (2015)

concluded through their study that people are more influenced by the relevant arguments instead

of subjective opinion.

In the modern era, there are tones of fake news prevailing on the Facebook and these are

all because of the actions and comments of the users who just likes and shares the post on

evaluating how much likes and shares it has received by the fellow users. A recent study

conducted by Colliander (2019) concludes that “Users exposed to comments by others users that

were critical of the fake news had lower attitudes to the fake news, and were more likely to
FACEBOOK FEEDBACKS AND ITS INFLUENCE 5

comment critically and share the fake news themselves, than users who were exposed to

comments supportive of the fake news" (pg. 205).

However, a recent study conducted by Kelly, Ngo, Chituc, Huettel & Armstrong (2017)

showed opposite results. According to their study, people are more influenced by rational

justifications as compared to emotional justification (Kelly, Ngo, Chituc, Huettel & Sinnott-

Armstrong, 2017). This means that people express their perception based upon reasons rather

than being influenced by emotional opinions of others. Another study showed that people who

view the Facebook profile of a person perceives him more favorably than one who perceives

them through their memory (Vogel & Rose, 2017).

FACEBOOK FEEDBACKS AND ITS INFLUENCE 6

References

Brown, J. (2018). Is social media bad for you? The evidence and the unknowns. Retrieved 22

January 2020, from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180104-is-social-media-bad-

for-you-the-evidence-and-the-unknowns.

Sherman, L., Payton, A., Hernandez, L., Greenfield, P., & Dapretto, M. (2016). The Power of the

Like in Adolescence. Psychological Science, 27(7), 1027-1035. doi:

10.1177/0956797616645673.

Perrin, A. (2015). Social Media Usage 2005-2015 (p. 4). Pew research Center. Retrieved from

https://www.secretintelligenceservice.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/PI_2015-10-

08_Social-Networking-Usage-2005-2015_FINAL.pdf.

Anderson, J., Bresnahan, M., & Musatics, C. (2014). Combating Weight-Based Cyberbullying

on Facebook with the Dissenter Effect. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, And Social

Networking, 17(5), 281-286. doi: 10.1089/cyber.2013.0370

Winter, S., Brückner, C., & Krämer, N. (2015). They Came, They Liked, They Commented:

Social Influence on Facebook News Channels. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, And Social

Networking, 18(8), 431-436. doi: 10.1089/cyber.2015.0005

Kelly, M., Ngo, L., Chituc, V., Huettel, S., & Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2017). Moral conformity

in online interactions: rational justifications increase influence of peer opinions on moral

judgments. Social Influence, 12(2-3), 57-68. doi: 10.1080/15534510.2017.1323007

FACEBOOK FEEDBACKS AND ITS INFLUENCE 7

Vogel, E., & Rose, J. (2017). Perceptions of Perfection: The Influence of Social Media on

Interpersonal Evaluations. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 39(6), 317-325. doi:

10.1080/01973533.2017.1356303

Colliander, J. (2019). “This is fake news”: Investigating the role of conformity to other users’

views when commenting on and spreading disinformation in social media. Computers In

Human Behavior, 97, 202-215. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2019.03.032