14 DAY TRIAL // Investigators have found out that it's possible to distinguish people who value themselves based mainly on appearances from their peers who don't, by simply checking their Facebook profiles.
Most of those people put many photographs online, and have the tendency to maintain very large friend networks on a multitude of social networking sites, including Facebook, MySpace and Friendster.
In the case of girls and women, the research team behind the work reveals, Facebook is often times a platform on which they can compete for attention just like they would in real life.
This happens because they identify themselves more with their image, appearance and reputation than men do, both online and in real life. This is the conclusion of a new study by University in Buffalo researchers, led by expert Michael A. Stefanone, PhD.
“The results suggest persistent differences in the behavior of men and women that result from a cultural focus on female image and appearance,” the lead investigator writes in a paper appearing in the latest issue of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking.
University of Texas in Austin scientist Derek Lackaff, PhD and University of Hawaii in Manoa researcher Devan Rosen, PhD, were the coauthors of the new paper, PsychCentral reports.
Among the things the experts took into account in this study were the amount of time users spent managing their Facebook profiles, the number of pictures they posted online, the number of friends they had in their social network, and the type of behavior they displayed in making new friends.
Experts also used the CSW Scale (contingences of self worth) on 311 participants aged around 23, of which half were females. They then applied questionnaires to determine how the subjects perceived their own online behavior.
“Those whose self-esteem is based on public-based contingencies (defined here as others’ approval, physical appearance and outdoing others in competition) were more involved in online photo sharing, and those whose self-worth is most contingent on appearance have a higher intensity of online photo-sharing,” Stefanone explains.
“Participants whose self worth is based on private-based contingencies (defined in this study as academic competence, family love and support, and being a virtuous or moral person) spend less time online,” he adds.
“Perhaps this reflects the distorted value pegged to women’s looks throughout the popular culture and in reality programming from ‘The Bachelor’ to ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians',” the expert concludes.