Abstract
People often compare themselves to others to gain a better understanding of the self in a process known as social comparison. The current study discusses how people engage in a social comparison process on Facebook, and how observing content from their Facebook friends may affect their emotions. A 2 (comparison direction) × 2 (relational closeness) × 2 (self-esteem) between-subjects experiment was conducted with 163 adult participants. The results revealed a significant 3-way interaction such that people with high self-esteem would be happier receiving positive information than negative information from their close friends, but the effect would be the opposite if the information was from a distant friend. There was no such difference for people with low self-esteem.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 619-640 |
Number of pages | 22 |
Journal | Human Communication Research |
Volume | 42 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Oct 1 2016 |
Keywords
- Emotion
- Relational Closeness
- Self-Esteem
- Social Comparison
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Communication
- Developmental and Educational Psychology
- Anthropology
- Linguistics and Language