ATTRACTIVENESS BIAS AND FRIEND SELECTION 2
Attractiveness Bias and Friend Selection on Facebook ok
University of North Carolina Wilmington
Abstract
This study investigated social biases regarding attractiveness in friendship choices on Facebook. The research team created 2 false profiles of the same woman? with similar demographic information and number of friends, 1 with a profile picture of an unattractive female rated at 2.16 with a standard deviation of .89 on a scale of 1 to 7 for relative attractiveness and the other of the same woman after plastic surgery and a makeover, rated to be 5.89 with a standard deviation of .89 on the attractiveness scale. Separate sentences It was predicted that a significant bias would be exhibited by participants favoring the attractive profile. Friend suggestions were sent by the research team to 1,060 participants for the unattractive false profile and 758 participants for the attractive profile. Each profile was given 1 week to accumulate resulting friend requests with a two day lapse between suggesting the separate profiles. After this time, the number of requests sent to each profile as a result of the suggestions was measured. 93 spell participants requested friendship from the unattractive profile and 105 requested the attractive profile. The response by gender was also measured, and it was found that 10% of males and 6% of females requested the unattractive profile and 22% of males and 10% of females requested the attractive profile. Both males and females significantly favored the attractive profile. Overall, a significant bias favoring the attractive profile was found in total and by each gender.ok..importance?
Introduction
From plastic surgery and fad diets to braces and piercings, appearance is a priority in our American culture ref?. As standards rise, the methods seem to get more barbaric and extreme, sacrificing time, money, and pain for the sake of beauty. Many studies have investigated the benefits people are seeking by putting themselves through these ordeals and the biases pervasive in society that make such changes worth the risk. There is an inherent bias toward the attractive in our culture which leaves those lacking natural beauty at a disadvantage in the job, education, and marriage markets refs. Though body mass is one of the most influential factors in these biases, facial attractiveness also tends to play a major role ref?. The type and extent of social prejudices largely depend on age, gender, race, and class, affecting some people much more than others (Conley & McCabe, 2011).
It is no surprise that beauty can have such benefits in our society as everywhere one looks there are commercials, billboards, and other media displaying the beautiful and relentlessly taunting “average Joes” (Sarwer & Magee, 2006). The extent that beauty affects one person’s response to another can be excessive when what has come to be associated with beauty, or, more of interest to this study, what is denied to those lacking conventional beauty, is considered. Good Macintyre and West (1991) found that perceived physical attractiveness is associated by raters with other inherent socially desirable character traits. Perceptions of the beautiful include assumptions about their character and even demographics, such as coming from a higher social class, being more mature, having clear speech, and exhibiting good communication skills. It logically follows, then, that these traits bestowed upon the attractive are denied to the less attractive. This puts individuals perceived as attractive at an advantage in society as they do not need to work as hard to prove their internal qualities (1991). good
These biases not only apply to factors that would benefit one’s career path, but also to perceptions of one’s social skills and positive personality factors. In a similar study, Hunsberger and Cavanagh (1988) found that elementary school students, when shown photographs of attractive and unattractive potential teachers, consistently preferred the attractive photographs. The students rated them as nicer and happier, as well asand had higher expectations as far as what they would be able to learn from them based on the photographs alone. In contrast, the unattractive teachers were judged as those who would more likely punish their students (Hunsberger & Cavanagh, 1988). This shows that social biases against the unattractive are instilled early and permeate far deeper than expected. If an individual is automatically assumed to not be as nice, he can be put at a disadvantage for social networking and support. Very good
In a situation such as Facebook, a virtual community where friends can be carefully chosen and come to be a reflection of oneself, these biases seem to hold as well. Since Facebook is primarily used for social networking and all interactions are via the internet with no physical contact involved, appearances are even more important as that is the first aspect that is presented about any individual. While the size of one’s friends list has been found to be related to social attractiveness ratings, who one is friends with has been related to the profile owner’s physical attractiveness rating (Tong, Van Der Heide, Langwell & Walther, 2008). Walther, Van Der Heide, Kim, Westerman, and Tong (2008) found that having attractive friends posting on one’s wall results in higher ratings for attractiveness than having unattractive friends’ posts displayed. good This result was independent of the type of comment, as both positive and negative comments received higher ratings when posted by someone more attractive. It seems that people on Facebook are judged by the friends they keep and interact with, which may augment the social biases already rampant in American culture. It is interesting to see the extent of these biases in a virtual world where little or no physical contact ensues. Facebook members have no obligation to interact with their friends from Facebook in person if they so choose, but there is still evidence of a strong bias favoring more attractive members. Fono and Raynes-Goldie described various implications behind virtual friendship, including courtesy or politeness and declaration of friendship (as cited in Thelwall, 2008). It is possible that when members deny friendship of someone less attractive, the declaration of friendship explanation is behind it. In a virtual community, others see only what the user wants them to see, which may stray some away from accepting friendship from someone less attractive in order to preserve their own reputation.
This The present study focuses on friendship acceptance on Facebook and how attractiveness may relate to whether someone is accepted or not. In a similar study by Wang, Moon, Kwon, Evans, and Stefanone (2010), it was concluded that subjects were more willing to friend profile owners of the opposite sex with more attractive photos than unattractive profile owners. A more dramatic find than this, though, is was that participants also preferred to accept requests from profiles lacking a picture more than one with an unattractive picture, suggesting that an unattractive profile picture can be a significant factor deterring one from accepting friendship. How does our study differ from Wang? After reviewing past findings on the topic and the relations between not only social biases, but also friend selection on Facebook as a reflection on the individual, it is hypothesized that participants will more readily befriend a profile with an attractive picture than a less attractive picture.
Method
Participants
Data was collected from 1,060 Facebook friends/participants, recruited from the university?? network on Facebook. All were within the networks of the research team’s (n=?) university friends. A total number of 1,060 students were suggested as friends for the first, less attractive experimental profile and 758 were suggested for the second, more attractive profile.
Materials
The materials used in this study included 2 false profiles created on Facebook. Each exhibited a variable of interest, level of attractiveness, as rated by the research team. Figure 1 shows the photographs used before and after a physical make-over involving plastic surgery for the profiles in order to contrast attractiveness for the same person and eliminate possible confounds based on other elements of the picture. Awk, make 2 sentences The profile picture of the first, before the changes were made awk, was considered by the research team to be less attractive than the picture after the changes were made and rated as a 2.16 on a scale of 1 to 7 on relative attractiveness while the second, more attractive profile was rated to be 5.89, Rating scale description/anchors ( n=?) both ratings with a standard deviation of .89. The profiles included similar but not identical/ why not? background information such as hometown, current city, and college, and they also have a similar number of friends (31 for the first and 26 for the second) in order to avoid bias based on popularity or other factors.
Figure 1: This figure shows the photographs used to measure attractiveness on friend selection on FacebookProcedure
The research team consisting of 20 people collaborated to create 2 false profiles with contrasting pictures of one person, the first attractive and the other unattractive. They then entered background information on each profile and every member of the team added the false profiles as friends in order to build up their friend lists to make them appear to be more realistic. Once the profiles were created, each member researcher went on to their personal profiles and suggested the false profiles as friends to people already in their university network using the Suggest Friends tool on Facebook. A total of 1,060 suggestions were sent out for the first, unattractive profile and 758 were sent for the second. The amount of friend requests sent to the false profiles as a result of the suggestions was then measured. Why did the numbers differ?
Results
This study examined the responses of 1,060 Facebook friends/participants to friendship suggestions for the unattractive false profile and 758 participants for the attractive profile. Figure 2 shows the frequencies at which participants responded to the friend suggestions for the false profiles. For the unattractive false profile, these suggestions results in requests for friendship from 93 Facebook friends (48 males, 41 females). The attractive false profile received 105 friend requests (60 males, 39 females).
Both the independent variable, type of profile, and the dependent variable, response to the suggestions, were measured as nominal data. Therefore the effect of attraction on friend requesting was evaluated using Chi-squared analysis. The results showed a significant effect of attraction on friend requesting with a bias towards the attractive profile (χ2(1, N=1,060) = 11.75, p = .001). There was also a significant effect found when examined across gender, with both males and females requesting friendship from the attractive profile more than the unattractive (χ2(1, N=485) = 21.07, p = .001 and χ2(1, N=771) = 9.71, p = .002 respectively). Though there was a significant bias exhibited by both males and females, it was more pronounced by males. Table I shows the percentages of males and females that requested friendship from the false profiles after the friend suggestions were sent. Twenty-two percent of males that were sent suggestions requested friendship from the attractive false profile, while 10% requested the unattractive false profile. Ten percent of females requested the attractive false profile and 6% requested the unattractive false profile. good
Figure 2: The figure above shows the frequencies for participants’ responses to the friends suggestions examined across gender, with males requesting more frequently than females for both conditions and both groups requesting friendship from the attractive false profile more often than the unattractive. okay
Table I: Percentage across gender of participants that requested friendship after friend suggestion was sent
Males – Request Friendship / Females – Request FriendshipUnattractive / 10% / 6%
Attractive / 22% / 10%
Discussion
This study concluded that, consistent with our prediction, there is a significant bias favoring more attractive profile pictures in the process of requesting friends on Facebook. Both males and females requested friendship from the attractive false profile at a higher proportional rate than the unattractive false profile, though the bias was more prominent in males than females.
Within the design of this experiment, there were some potential confounds in the study to be accounted for that may have affected the results. First, the order of the friend suggestion sent may have had an influence, as the unattractive profile was consistently suggested throughout all participants two days prior to the attractive profile. However it would be expected that the first suggestion would more likely be taken and the second ignored as the sequence of requests may make the participant suspicious. As the unattractive profile was the first to be suggested and yet consistently received fewer requests than the attractive profile, the order of request does not seem to be cause for concern. Very good! Set up the problem..then address it logically..good
Second, suspicion towards the false profiles by the participant may have influenced the requests. If known to be false, participants are expected tomight be more wary of requesting friendship. To prevent this, the research team built up the friend lists of both profiles to a similar number and filled out relevant personal information such as university and high schools attended, birthday, and hometown. Related to this is the fact that, within the friend suggestions sent to participants, the member of the research team that sent the request to that particular participant was revealed. This may have had one of two effects: first, it may have served to reassure the participant of the legitimacy of the false profile by providing a mutual connection between the false profile and participant and, as a result, influencing the participant towards a more realistic response; or, second, it may have indicated to some the nature of the experiment and influenced a response bias, either towards cooperativity to help the study or negativity to disrupt it. hmmm