April 16, 2015Dartmouth College Facebook users with so-called optimistic bias think they're less likely than other users to experience cyberbullying, depression and other negative social and psychological effects from using the site, a study finds. The study suggests that optimistic bias, or an intrinsic tendency to imagine future events in a favorable light that enhances positive self-regard -- in other words, wishful thinking -- leaves those Facebook users vulnerable to the negative realities of social media. Facebook users with so-called optimistic bias think they're less likely than other users to experience cyberbullying, depression and other negative social and psychological effects from using the site, a Dartmouth-Cornell study finds. The study suggests that optimistic bias, or an intrinsic tendency to imagine future events in a favorable light that enhances positive self-regard -- in other words, wishful thinking -- leaves those Facebook users vulnerable to the negative realities of social media. The findings appear in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. "Our findings demonstrate important and novel discrepancies in how people perceive themselves and others concerning the positive and negative outcomes of Facebook use," says lead author Sunny Jung Kim, a postdoctoral research associate in the Psychiatric Research Center and the Center for Technology and Behavioral Health at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. "A growing number of studies report possible benefits and risks of using Facebook and other social media, ranging from effects on self-esteem to cyberbullying. But little is known about how people perceive themselves to be likely to experience these mixed outcomes and what the implications of having these perceptions are." In the new study, the researchers surveyed 237 active Facebook users between ages 18 and 37. The participants were asked to assess their own and other people's likelihood of experiencing positive and negative outcomes on Facebook. They also were asked to rate their likelihood of supporting Internet regulations, their personal Facebook involvement and their attitudes toward Facebook use. The results show that Facebook users with optimistic bias tend to show strong support for Internet regulations to protect other users from social ostracizing, although not from psychologically negative effects, including depression and loneliness. The lack of support regarding psychological harms may be because mental health effects are perceived as less amenable to regulation or because their importance is underestimated, the researchers say. The results also show that Facebook users who view the site negatively or who use it infrequently think other people are more likely than themselves to have positive experiences on the site, a reversed optimistic bias that is new and intriguing. "When ostensibly positive outcomes, such as receiving social support from Facebook friends, are perceived to be unusual and irrelevant for themselves, the direction of the optimistic bias for these objectively positive outcomes can be dampened or even reversed," Kim says. Co-author Cornell Professor Jeffrey Hancock adds: "It's fascinating that well-established, third-person effects are also seen on Facebook, but the reversal shows how social media is not identical to mass media." "Although some might argue that it is still premature to claim that Facebook use is a direct predictor of extreme events such as clinical depression and suicidal attempts, a growing line of research indicates that negative events such as Facebook cyberbullying can result in detrimental consequences, including depression and substance use problems," Kim says. "Without adequate protections, the damage of these critical events can be severe. This is especially the case for those in a vulnerable health condition, in which this optimistic bias for risk events can leave them unprepared without adequate health protective behaviors. We argue that Facebook may serve as a source of emotional support between users and as a platform to disseminate protective health messages to prevent negative psychological consequences of Facebook use. Given that negative personal and health news such as stressful events and depressive symptoms are frequently shared on Facebook, it may be an important site for observing negative psychological states of users." Story Source: The above story is based on materials provided by Dartmouth College. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference:
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sexta-feira, 17 de abril de 2015
Facebook users' wishful thinking: Cyberbullying, depression won't happen to me
domingo, 1 de março de 2015
Finding psychological insights through social media
Social media has opened up a new digital world for psychology research. Four researchers will be discussing new methods of language analysis, and how social media can be leveraged to study personality, mental and physical health, and cross-cultural differences. The speakers will be presenting their research during the symposium "Finding Psychological Signal in a Billion Tweets: Measurement Through the Language of Social Media," at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) 16th Annual Convention in Long Beach, California.Collaborating with computer scientists Researchers have long measured people's thoughts, feelings, and personalities using survey questions. The widespread use of Twitter and Facebook has afforded new approaches to social science research, and requires new techniques to analyze and interpret data using computer science methods. These techniques allow researchers the ability to generate insights from large-scale data sets. "Collaborations between psychologists and computer scientists can yield studies and insights that would not likely have been conceived independently by researchers from either field," says Andy Schwartz of the University of Pennsylvania. A study utilizing open-vocabulary analysis found striking variations in language with personality, gender, and age. Certain words and phrases can provide novel and detailed insights. For instance, men used the possessive 'my' when mentioning their 'wife' or 'girlfriend' more often than women used 'my' with 'husband' or 'boyfriend.' Open-vocabulary analysis can find connections that are unanticipated and often are not captured by other analysis techniques. "Data-driven techniques are mostly limited to finding correlations rather than causation...Future analyses are moving beyond words to capturing less ambiguous meanings from language," explains lead researcher Andy Schwartz. Collaboration between social and personality psychologists, and computer scientists, will be integral to moving that research forward. Assessing personality with Facebook Researchers have found that words used on Facebook are surprisingly reliable indicators of personality. Their results are published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The researchers utilized predictive algorithms of the language to create efficient large-scale personality assessments. The automated language-based models of traits were consistent with the participants' self-reported personality measurements. Lead author Gregory Park confirms the reliability of the language-based model: "We evaluated the method in several ways. Predictions from the automated methods can accurately predict the scores the users receive on personality tests. They are consistent with personality ratings made by the users' actual friends, and other personality-related outcomes, such as the number of friends, or self-reported political attitudes." Another study, published in the journal Assessment, analyzed Facebook statuses of study participants using open-language analysis. The researchers generated word clouds that visually illustrated how several personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness) appear on Facebook. The study found that certain phrases are predictive of specific personality traits. For example, individuals who score high in neuroticism on a self-reported personality assessments are more likely to use words like sadness, loneliness, fear and pain. Analyzing this data may provide novel connections that may not be apparent in traditional written questionnaires and surveys. Tracking community health through Twitter In a study recently published in the journal Psychological Science, researchers compared tweets and heart disease at the county level. The study found that language analyses may predict heart disease risk as well or better than traditional epidemiological risk factors. "Language associated with anger, negative emotions, hostility and disengagement within a community was associated with increased rates of heart disease," explains lead author Johannes Eichstaedt, "Language expressing positive emotions and engagement was associated with reduced risk." Twitter users are not necessarily individuals at-risk for heart disease, but rather, they can serve as canaries for communities with higher heart disease risk. Tweets can represent the overall negativity a community is feeling, and indicate the social and environmental stresses that contribute to increased heart-disease risk. The results of the study illustrate that Twitter serves as an accurate predictor of health and risk factors of a community. Eichstaedt and his colleagues are now analyzing words and phrases on Twitter to track depression and anxiety across populations. Cultural variation in language Social media allows researchers to examine similarities and differences across cultures at a new level. Cross-cultural studies typically require time-intensive qualitative analyses with a small number of people. Margaret Kern of the University of Melbourne and Maarten Sap of the University of Pennsylvania are using Twitter to study variations in language use across cultures. Using differential language analysis the researchers examined Twitter posts from eight countries (United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, India, Singapore, Mexico, and Spain) and two languages (English and Spanish). The researchers found that there were many similarities across countries, with emoticons and iconic pop artists correlating with positive emotions and curse words, and aggression correlating with negative emotions. There were also differences that point to culture-specific correlations for emotional expression. Results of the study are still preliminary, and have not yet been published. "A challenge for us is understanding how to interpret any differences we see- is it a really difference, or simply noise? In the future, we hope to work directly with people from these cultures to help us interpret and understand the results," explains lead researcher Margaret Kern. Story Source: The above story is based on materials provided by Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
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domingo, 8 de junho de 2014
Health policy researchers lack confidence in social media for communicating scientific evidence
Though Twitter boats 645 million users across the world, only 14 percent of health policy researchers reported using Twitter -- and approximately 20 percent used blogs and Facebook -- to communicate their research findings over the past year, according to a new study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In contrast, sixty-five percent used traditional media channels, such as press releases or media interviews. While participants believed that social media can be an effective way to communicate research findings, many lacked the confidence to use it and felt their academic peers and institutions did not value it or respect it as much as traditional media and direct contact with policy makers. However, the authors note that when used effectively, social media channels could present a major opportunity for connecting with both policy makers and the general public. Full results of the study, one of the first of its kind, are published online today in the journal Health Affairs, and will be presented as a plenary session during this weekend's annual AcademyHealth conference in San Diego, CA.
The study, a survey of 215 health and health-policy researchers (primarily MDs and PhDs), comes as academic journals, public health agencies, and health care organizations increasingly use social media to communicate health-related information. It also comes at a time when the nation is embarking on major changes to the health care system -- a time when health policy research evidence is increasingly important.
"Our study uncovered four central findings," explained lead author, David Grande, MD, MPA, assistant professor of Medicine at Penn Medicine. "First, most health policy researchers are not using social media to communicate their research results, which could be a significant missed opportunity to expose a larger audience to important health news and findings."
Results of the study also reveal that researchers worry about how their peers and home institutions perceive social media, and that many describe it as replete with opinion and 'junk' and are concerned about presenting their scientific results in such settings. However, Grande notes that participants became more confident about social media when given examples of how the channels could be used effectively. For example, many thought that they could not communicate anything beyond the 140-character limit on Twitter, despite the common practice of including links to more substantive content. Understanding how to use these tools, the authors say, could alleviate concerns about the information being superficially presented.
Finally, the study shows that junior faculty members are more positively predisposed than their senior colleagues about social media. This, Grande says, could be a result of greater familiarity with it from other aspects of their lives, or it might be because senior faculty members have greater access to policy makers owing to their stature and reputation. Regardless, the authors suggest there are considerable benefits to using the tools for research dissemination.
"Historically, there has been a significant communication gap between researchers, on the one hand, and policy makers and the public at large, on the other," said senior author Zachary Meisel, MD, assistant professor of Emergency Medicine at Penn. "Social media channels are promising tools for closing this gap, provided they are used appropriately and effectively. As a first step, medical schools and health care institutions should help to educate researchers on how to properly use these channels to circulate their research findings and discuss implications."
In addition to Grande and Meisel, other Penn authors are Jane Seymour, Adeline Goss, and Austin Kilaru. Sarah Gollust, a former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, is also a co-author, as is Maximilian Pany from Swarthmore College.
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
- David Grande, Sarah E. Gollust, Maximilian Pany, Jane Seymour, Adeline Goss, Austin Kilaru, and Zachary Meisel. Translating Research For Health Policy: Researchers’ Perceptions And Use Of Social Media. Health Aff, 2014 DOI: 10.1377/hlthaff.2014.0300