Self-Affirmation on Facebook

• Social network sites (SNSs) like Facebook have become very popular, but the reasons for their appeal are not fully understood.
• One explanation is that SNSs fulfill people's ego needs.
• Self-affirmation theory can explain why and when people use their online profiles.
• Facebook profiles are self-affirming and satisfy the users need for self-worth.
• Users gravitate towards online presence after ego-blows to repair perception of self-worth.
• This explanation extends self-affirmation theory by clarifying how it operates in everyday environments.
• Social network sites (SNSs) have become incredibly popular.
• Facebook has over one billion active users, who spend almost an hour online daily.
• Even older adults are joining SNSs; almost half of Americans over 50 use SNSs which is 100% increase from the previous year.

Speculations on SNSs

• The media and public view SNSs as tools for procrastination, gossip, boredom relief, and expressing narcissism.
• Academic research indicates that relational needs, like maintaining relationships, are often cited as motivations for SNS use.
• Ego needs may be a compelling reason for using these sites.
• Maintaining self-images is an ego need with the potential to drive SNS use.

Self-Affirmation Theory

• Self-affirmation theory can explain the appeal of SNSs.
• SNSs allow users to craft self-presentations that reveal core aspects of their self-concept.
• SNSs allow users to highlight social connections with friends and family.
• These features satisfy ego needs related to desired self-images, motivating SNS use.
• Analyses focus on Facebook as the most popular SNS, encapsulating the central features of SNSs.
• Examining self-affirming qualities on Facebook uniquely extends self-affirmation theory.
• The theory has been extensively tested in labs, using self-affirmation activities like ranking values and writing essays.
• These methods are not spontaneously adopted in everyday life.
• After experiencing an ego blow individuals may browse the Internet to check information.
• Procrastination may affirm political identity, or examine game scores to affirm a valued social identity.

Facebook Profiles

• Facebook profiles are a real-world setting for self-affirmation.
• A positive self-image is an important motivator.
• People dismiss, distort, or avoid information that threatens their self-worth.
• People value, cultivate, and seek information that reinforces their self-worth.
• Self-affirmation brings awareness to self-concept aspects, such as values, relationships, and characteristics.
• People seek such information, especially after an ego threat, to repair self-worth.
• After engaging with self-affirming information, individuals are less likely to be defensive.
• Self-affirmation secures self-worth and integrity, reducing the need for defense mechanisms and making people more open-minded.

Self-Affirmation

• Facebook connects users with friends, family, and acquaintances.
• Users create profiles describing activities, interests, and values.
• Communication between "friends" is publicly posted and archived.
• Facebook profiles may affirm self-worth as users gravitate towards them to elevate their self-perceptions.
• Facebook profiles must represent self-worth domains and display self-concept aspects to be self-affirming.
• Aspects include social roles, affiliation to networks, attitudes/preferences, and social connectedness.
• Social norms on Facebook dictate high levels of disclosure which includes personal info, like birth date, sexual orientation, and relationship partner.
• Disclosure is believed to be essential for making SNSs useful.

Self-Presentation

• Self-affirming profiles must offer a positive and desirable self-presentation.
• Large audiences motivate users to present the best image.
• Technological affordances enable users to craft desirable self-presentations with editability and asynchronicity.
• Profile statements should be positive.
• Messages from friends that are posted are typically warm, supportive, and validating.
• Self-affirming profiles must be accurate; lying highlights inadequacy and makes information useless for self-affirmation.
• Constraints minimize deception, and people are less likely to lie when there is a high likelihood of getting caught.
• Honesty is promoted when friends and acquaintances have access to the profile who verifies accuracy.
• Profile information contributed by friends is more credible due to less control by the self-presenter.
• Friends' postings testify to friendship and indicate social connectivity.
• Facebook profiles are sufficiently accurate for reliable personality judgments.
• Facebook profiles benefit users because they capture a flattering, socially connected, meaningful, and accurate self-portrait.

Expanding Self-Affirmation Theory

• SNSs offer new ways to represent important domains of self like relationships and values.
• Facebook ease of access helps investigate self-affirmation in people daily lives giving a useful extension to existing research.
• Existing research focuses on effects of self-affirmation rather than its causes and explicates users attraction.

Overview of Studies

• Facebook profiles help satisfy users' need for self-worth and self-integrity.
• Facebook's self-affirmational qualities may be a reason why it's used.

Study 1

• The self-affirmation literature uses a defensiveness-reducing paradigm to establish whether a certain activity is self-affirming.
• Self-affirmation diminishes defensive responses elicited by ego threats to satisfy the need for self-worth and self-integrity.
• Participants are subjected to an ego threat, then prompted to engage in a self-affirming activity or not, then defensive responses are measured.
• A decrease in defensive responses means the activity is self-affirming in the this indirect approach.
• Browsing a Facebook profile is a self-affirming activity.
• The effect of Facebook profile exposure is compared to that of a well-established self-affirming activity.
• Participants: Undergraduates at a Northeastern university received course extra-credit (N = 98, 68% women; M age = 19.81).
• Ten participants were excluded because they were suspicious (n = 5) or because they were not Facebook users (n = 5).

Experiment Design

• Used a 2 (self-affirmation condition: affirmed vs. non-affirmed) × 2 (self-affirmation type: Facebook vs. values essay) experimental design.
• Participants in Facebook conditions were told to spend 5 min on a website.
• Website was participant's own Facebook profile.
• Participants asked to temporarily "friend" the experimenter for profile access and all participants agreed.
• Participants in Facebook controlled condition examined stranger's Facebook profile from the prior test group. Participants yoked such as each participant viewed the other's profile.
• Care was taken that participants in the Facebook control condition not be acquainted with the profiles they were viewing.
• Participants in the values essay self-affirmation condition ranked six values and wrote for 5 min about their highest ranked value to them.
• Participants wrote about why their lowest ranked value was important to the average college student in the essay condition.
• Values are single most widely used affirmation manipulation.
• Participants were given cover story about piloting a distance-learning Public Speaking course.
• They prepared a short (3-5 min) speech on the legality of abortion and delivered it through an ostensibly live camera to an evaluator. Evaluator gave written feedback on the speech.
• Participants rated fairness/usefulness of feedback, observed through a one-way mirror to ensure speech delivered.
• Participants were invited to complete an additional study to double extra-credit points while waiting for evaluator to write feedback.
• This study was the self-affirmation manipulation, enhanced by credibility using different experimenter.
• Evaluator returned with a sealed envelope containing the speech feedback.
• All participants got same generic negative feedback which was confirmed by participants regardless of affirming.
• Then, self-affirmation finished before ego threat to reduce defensiveness.
• Debriefing identified suspicious participants.

Measurement

• The dependent variable was acceptance of negative feedback received on speech.
• Feedback was rated on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 9 (a lot) on dimensions of: perceived accuracy, evaluator competence, task diagnosticity, attribution of performance to self or external circumstances, and liking of evaluator.
• Measures were highly correlated and averaged into an acceptance of feedback index (a = .88).
• Measures of trait self-esteem and affect were also collected but not reported in study. An analysis of variance was set up with the self-affirmation manipulation (affirmed or non-affirmed) and self-affirmation venue (Facebook or values essay) as between-subjects factors.
• Participants who were self-affirmed, regardless of the venue, were more accepting of feedback (M = 5.72, SD = 1.21) than non-affirmed participants (M = 4.31, SD = 1.42).
• Self-affirmation venue did not have a significant effect implying Facebook was same as values essay.
• Facebook and values essays operated similarly without any interaction.
• Participants who examined their own Facebook profiles were more accepting of the feedback compared to participants who examined a stranger's profile.
• The findings indicated that Facebook profile exposure is a self-affirming activity.
• Affirmation earned from Facebook and classic values essay were not significantly different.
• Examining a Facebook profile for 5 minutes made one more likely to assume responsibility.
• Non-defensive attitude toward an ego threat increased self-worth and self-integrity.
• The same well-validated self-affirming activities had the same effects which suggests that spending time on Facebook may fulfill important ego needs.
• Facebook helps people see themselves through connections and networks of relationships.

Study 2

• Facebook profiles are a source of self-affirmation, in the sense of bestowing users with a sense of overall self-integrity and well-being.
• Users spontaneously seek out Facebook for the purpose of buttressing self-worth.
• It addresses the question of whether they capitalize on the benefits provided by their Facebook profile in time of psychological need. Self-affirmation theory posits that perceived ego threats activate an unconscious motive to restore the adequacy and integrity of the self.
• People search for self-affirming information in the environment.
• Central to self-affirmation theory, the proposition has received little empirical attention.
• Claims Facebook can serve as a venue for self-affirmation, clarifying whether they actually serve as one.
• Undergraduate students received course extra-credit for their participation (N = 86; 66% women; M age = 19.79, SD = 1.04).
• Some participants excluded because they were not Facebook and some excluded because suspiciousness
• Experimental Design was the same and participants assigned to receive negative or neutral feedback.
• Instead, after receiving feedback, choice to participate in one of five "unrelated" studies ostensibly going on in the lab, in exchange for an additional extra-credit point.
• One study browsing their own Facebook profile and four decoy studies involved online activity designed to be as similar as possible to Facebook profile browsing, but not self-affirming.
• Activities did not differ from Facebook in terms of engagement, excitable, or difficulty and included watching YouTube, listening to online music, reading online news, and playing online videogames.
• Funneled debrief used to identify suspicious participants who did not finish studies.

Measurements

• Participants ranked 5 studies and preferences to test any awareness for benefits.
• Measures affected participant groups to rate activities for familiarity, interesting, positivity to see affects Facebook preferences.
• They included satisfaction through postivity for self presentation.
• Recoding reflected participant and revealed participants equally chose facebook after receiving feedback.
• Participant chose facebook twice as much after negative feedback.
• Threats activated facebook.

Study Results

• Participants wree more likely to pick Facebook after they received feedback.
• Engagement with other activities were perceived as more positive.
• Facebooks help with self affirmation.
• Facebook users have been shown to improve perceptions of self-worth.
• People elevated percrptions and supported key proposition.
• There fore people mainttain elevated percrptions through self affirmation.

Final Thoughts

• Faccebook has self affirming qualities and may be a reason it so attractive.
• People tend to spend increased time after threats
• Helps incrrease percptions.
• Helps the cause and effects.

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Research indicates social networks like Facebook are appealing due to their self-affirming nature. Users engage more with online profiles after setbacks to unconsciously restore their ego. This study extends self-affirmation theory to modern social behavior.