“Likes” as social rewards: Their role in online social comparison and decisions to like other People's selfies

Highlights

• SNS users use flattering interaction information such as “Likes” for social comparison.

• Downward comparison elicits positive and upward comparison negative emotional affect.

• The likability of the other more strongly predicted decisions to give a “Like” than comparison outcome.

Abstract

It has been argued that reported negative effects of social networking site use on well-being and depression might be due to the vast opportunities for unflattering social comparison on Facebook. Social media websites offer Likes, a numeric representation of social acceptance, as a form of “online social currency,” which can be seen as a secondary reinforcer that drives people's tendency to compare with others. Against this background, we present an experimental study (n = 118) in which participants saw and evaluated their own selfies and selfies of other people with and without Likes. Moreover, they saw two selfies with the respective number of Likes in direct (favorable or unfavorable) comparison, and indicated their emotional state and whether they would like the other person's selfie. Results demonstrate that Likes are used for comparisons with the expected affective outcome. Like decisions, however, were rather based on judgments of likability, admiration and positive feelings after comparison rather than the comparison outcome.

Introduction

Millions of users interact via social networks like Facebook on a daily basis. Recent studies suggest that such overexploitation can significantly alter subjective well-being and perceived life satisfaction (Kross et al., 2013; Verduyn et al., 2015), possibly leading to addiction (Turel, He, Xue, Xiao, & Bechara, 2014) and depression (Nesi & Prinstein, 2015). It has been argued that these negative effects of social networking site (SNS) use on well-being and depression might be due to the vast opportunities for unflattering social comparison on SNS. Motivated by impression management, Facebook and other SNS profiles are designed to render mainly positive self-portrayals (Walther, 2007), and thereby provide “information (that) is positively skewed” (Appel, Gerlach, & Crusius, 2016, p. 44). Appel et al. (2016) argue that these circumstances increase the probability for unflattering social comparisons (upward social comparison), especially because users interact mainly with friends and peers on SNS which implies similarity to comparison standards and high personal relevance. A review on this topic indeed suggests that painful social comparisons are to some extent linked to decreases in well-being and symptoms of depression (Appel et al., 2016), which has been observed in cross-sectional (Krasnova, Wenninger, Widjaja, & Buxmann, 2013; Lee, 2014; Steers, Wickham, & Acitelli, 2014; Tandoc, Ferrucci, & Duffy, 2015; Vogel, Rose, Okdie, Eckles, & Franz, 2015; Vogel, Rose, Roberts, & Eckles, 2014), prospective (Feinstein et al., 2013; Nesi & Prinstein, 2015), experience sampling (Steers et al., 2014) and experimental studies (Appel, Crusius, & Gerlach, 2015; Fardouly, Diedrichs, Vartanian, & Halliwell, 2015; Haferkamp & Kramer, 2011; Verduyn et al., 2015; Vogel et al., 2015). Moreover, SNS provide so-called one-click tools such as Likes on Facebook or Instagram that have the potential to be of social and affective relevance (Carr, Wohn, & Hayes, 2016; R. A.; Hayes, Carr, & Wohn, 2016; Wohn, Carr, & Hayes, 2016) and might work as yet another (but quantifiable) mechanism to compare oneself with others: did my friend receive more Likes (and hence more social acceptance) for his/her selfie on vacation than I did for my vacation selfie?

Against this background the current study experimentally investigates the impact of Likes in a social comparison paradigm. We assume that receiving Likes is experienced as socially rewarding and that users observe how many Likes their own and other users’ pictures receive. Moreover, we assume that this information is used for social comparison, and that users experience positive or negative affect as a result of the social comparison outcome.