Thursday 21 February 2008

The Role of Friends’ Appearance and Behavior on Evaluations of Individuals on Facebook: Are We Known by the Company We Keep?

An article by Joseph B Walther, Brandon Van Der Heide, Sang-Yeon Kim and Stephanie Tom Tong (Michigan State University) and David Westerman (West Virginia University)

Abstract
This research explores how cues deposited by social partners onto one’s online networking profile affect observers’ impressions of the profile owner. An experiment tested the relationships between both
(a) what one’s associates say about a person on a social network site via "wall postings," where friends leave public messages, and
(b) the physical attractiveness of one’s associates reflected in the photos that accompany their wall postings on the attractiveness and credibility observers attribute to the target profile owner.
Results indicated that profile owners’ friends’ attractiveness affected their own in an assimilative pattern. Favorable or unfavorable statements about the targets interacted with target gender: Negatively valenced messages about certain moral behaviors increased male profile owners’ perceived physical attractiveness, although they caused females to be viewed as less attractive.

Human Communication Research Volume 34 Issue 1 (January 2008)

OK, so the more attractive my "friends" are the more attractive I will seem. Scatty psychology which I would guess is probably a more accurate statement about younger, more socially-active people than it is about the more business-oriented networks.

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