FACEBOOK LIKES- HOW DOES IT AFFECT THE RECIPIENT’S BEHAVIOR?

FACEBOOK LIKES- HOW DOES IT AFFECT THE RECIPIENT’S BEHAVIOR?

In this post, I am going to share the findings of a recent research by Facebook AI research team in the paper titled “Attitudes and Behaviors around receiving Likes on Facebook” by Scissors et. al. published in CSCW’16 held at San Francisco, CA. In this paper, they have dug deep into how likes affect people with varying mindsets and personalities and what matters more to them- the number of likes or from whom the likes have come from. They also have tried to find out the minimum number of likes with which a person feels content and what affects this number? This number has not been precisely found yet, still most people are content with 1 or 2 likes. They have also discussed a phenomenon called as like paradox, a corollary of friendship paradox- it finds out that a person’s friends has more number of likes on an average than the person himself or herself and this is mainly because the person’s friends have more friends than the person himself or herself. Lightweight, one-click feedback actions occur on Twitter, Flickr, Google Plus, and many other platforms. We focus on Facebook Likes because of the site’s size and scope. Roughly half (44%) of Facebook users Like content posted by their friends at least once a day , generating around 4.5 billion Likes daily as of 2013 . In addition, for some people, “getting feedback on content you have posted” is a major reason for using Facebook . Because a Like takes only one click to produce, it may be an easy way for acquaintances and more distant friends to maintain relationships without requiring a lot of effort or context. On the other hand, Likes may be perceived as less meaningful than comments or posts directly on friends’ walls. Despite being a less effortful form of communication than comments or messages, we view Likes as social cues that send a signal both to the person who created the post as well as to the poster’s network of friends. Given the ubiquity of Likes on Facebook, their theoretical importance as a social grooming tool [9], and this ambiguity around their significance, it is important to understand the value people ascribe to Likes so that we can better understand . motivations for sharing and the role of lightweight feedback in the social media ecosystem.

Methodology of Research and Results:-

Participants:-

Survey participants (N = 2,109; 56% female; ages 13 to 90, mean = 40.3) were recruited through a banner on Facebook displayed to English speakers in the U.S. who had a Facebook account for at least 12 weeks, posted any type of content at least twice, and received at least two Likes in the past 12 weeks. Since the questionnaire focused largely on the experiences of receiving Likes on one’s posts, we first asked participants how often they post to Facebook. Five percent (N = 114) of participants reported that they never post to Facebook and thus were excluded from analyses, leaving a sample of N = 1,996. Participants had an average of 491 friends (min = 1, max = 4,912) and had been using Facebook for 5.9 years (min = 97 days, max = 11 years). During the 28 days prior to the survey, participants logged in to Facebook on an average of 27.4 days (min = 2, max = 28). Compared to a random sample of US, English-speaking Facebook users, our sample was about 3 years older, had 13% more friends, was active on Facebook 2 more days out of the previous 28, and had a Facebook account for 9 months longer on average (all p’s < 0.05). Our sample had 3.5% more women. There was no significant difference in Likes received per post between our respondents and the random sample (M = 18.2 vs. M = 17.8, p = 0.06).

Behavioral data:-

Survey responses were matched to behavioral data from Facebook’s server logs for the prior 12 weeks. All data was de-identified and analyzed in aggregate by Facebook employees. Behavioral data included the number of posts, number of Likes and comments given and received, and the average number of Likes and comments received per post across participants’ 970,135 friends

Procedure:-

Participants filled out an online survey with two sections:

( 1)   attitudes and behaviors about Likes on Facebook and  

( 2)   personal characteristics; sections were presented in counterbalanced order

Items were measured on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) unless otherwise indicated.

Measures:-

Self-esteem: Participants completed the 10-item Rosenberg self-esteem scale , which included items like “On the whole, I am satisfied with myself,” and “I take a positive attitude toward myself” (M = 4.14, SD = .85, α = .91).

Self-monitoring: Participants completed a modified version of the self-monitoring scale . The four items participants completed were: “When I am uncertain how to act in a social situation, I look to the behavior of others for cues”; “At parties I usually try to behave in a manner that makes me fit in”; “I try to pay attention to the reactions of others to my behavior in order to avoid being out of place”; “If I am the least bit uncertain as to how to act in a social situation, I look to the behavior of others for cues.” (M = 3.06, SD = 1.02, α = .85).

Extraversion: Several studies have previously investigated the role of extraversion and Facebook use, including its role in group membership and its relationship with self-monitoring . Therefore, we also included a measure of extraversion in this study. Participants completed the four extraversion questions from the Big Five personality scale [6] (M = 3.22, SD = 1.01, α = .82).

Relationship Maintenance Behaviors: Participants filled out the Facebook Relationship Maintenance Behaviors scale [9]. Example items: “When I see a friend or acquaintance sharing bad news on Facebook, I try to respond” (M = 3.94, SD = .78, α = .81).

Attitudes and Behaviors about Likes

We asked people a series of questions related to their experiences with Likes on Facebook:

•   “How often do you post on Facebook (e.g., status update, photo, video, link)?” (1 = never, 5 = multiple times a day)

•   “Why do you think people ‘Like’ your posts?” (open-ended)

•   “If my post does not receive enough Likes, it makes me feel bad” (5pt agreement scale)

•   “There are certain people whose Likes I care about more than others.” (5pt agreement scale)

•   “On average, how many Likes do your posts get compared to your friends' posts?” (1 = my posts get far fewer Likes, 3 = our posts get about the same number of Likes, 5 = my posts get far more Likes)

“Which is usually more important to you, the number of Likes you get or which people Like your posts?” (1 = The number of Likes I get is much more important, 3 = They're both equally important, 5 = The people who Like my posts is much more important)

•   “In general, how much do you care about receiving Likes from the following types of people?” (random order:

Parents; Family members other than my parents; Close friends; Coworkers; Acquaintances; My spouse, romantic partner, or love interest; A former romantic partner; My manager, teacher, or supervisor; Potential employers or professional contacts; People I don't know).

Finally, we asked three questions about receiving “enough” Likes per post:

•   “If one of your posts were to get ‘enough’ Likes, how many Likes would that be? Please write in a number below.”

•  “How did you arrive at that number?” (open-ended)

•   “How important is it for you to get ‘enough’ Likes on your posts?” (1 = not at all important to 5 = extremely important)

RESULTS:-

In the 12 weeks prior to taking the survey, the median participant made 5.25 posts per week (mean = 11.8), “Posts” include photos, text, links, check-ins, and re- shares; multi -photo posts were batched and counted as a single post. The median person received 12.8 Likes per post (min = 0.07, mean = 18.2, max = 692.1). Figure below shows the 12-week averages for all participants.

        

                            FIG 1:AVERAGE LIKES RECEIVED PER POST

                                            FIG. 1: -  AVERAGE LIKES RECEIVED PER POST

About half (52.7%) of participants said that getting “enough” Likes was important to some extent. Yet only 16% of participants agreed with the statement “If my post does not receive enough Likes, it makes me feel bad.” Though most respondents did not feel badly about not getting enough Likes, in open-ended responses they noted they think their friends Like their posts for a number of self-affirming reasons including agreement, attention, supportiveness and empathy.

How many Likes are enough?

Participants proposed a wide range of values for “enough” Likes per post, with the median person volunteering that 8 Likes was “enough” (see Figure 2; numbers larger than 500 were omitted, excluding 3.4% of the sample from that question). Roughly ¼ of respondents reported that 1 or 2 Likes was enough, commenting in open- ended responses that they wanted to be sure someone had seen their posts (e.g., “If it gets at least one or two likes, then I know someone saw it, and that is good enough for me." and “If my post can impact at least one person then I'm happy.”). Beyond 1-2 Likes, people had a variety of reasons for the numbers they chose:

Do people receive “enough” Likes per post?

Roughly two-thirds (62.5%) of participants received what they consider to be “enough” Likes per post in the previous 12 weeks (see Figure 3). Of the remaining third, they fell short by an average of 27.9 Likes (median = 8.9). (Note that this statistic omits 3.4% of respondents who had values greater than 500 for “enough.”) But only some people care about Likes. When removing participants who said they did not care “at all” about receiving enough Likes, 49.9% of participants received what they consider to be “enough” Likes per post, with the average person receiving 6.5 more likes than his or her threshold, and the median person receiving exactly enough (a difference of 0.04 Likes per post). For those who felt they didn’t receive “enough” Likes, what might have led to their inflated expectations? One factor may be the Like paradox as per their research.

FIG. 2: RESPONSES TO ENOUGH LIKES PER  POST                      FIG. 3: AVERAGE LIKES RECEIVED PER POST                                                                                                                  POST BY RESPONSES TO ENOUGH  LIKES PER POST             

                                                             

The Like Paradox

Similar to the friendship paradox, where most people have fewer friends than their friends have [12], in this work we demonstrate a “Like paradox:” people receive fewer Likes on their posts than their friends get. During the 12 weeks prior to the survey, participants’ friends received roughly twice as many Likes per post (median = 23.8) as they did (median = 12.8). Figure 4 shows the difference between the two. Why did their friends receive more Likes? Those friends had roughly twice as many friends as our participants (see Figure 5).

Only some participants perceived this discrepancy in Likes between themselves and their friends: 28% reported on the survey receiving fewer Likes than their friends and 56% thought they got about the same number of Likes. This suggests that there may be other factors that influence people’s impressions of the number of Likes they should receive, not just how many their friends receive.

                                                                                          

                      

FIG. 4: AVERAGE LIKES RECEIVED BY                                                          FIG. 5:  FRIENDSHIP PARADOX

SURVEY RESPONDENTS AND THEIR FRIENDS.

Who do people want Likes from?

Participants most wanted to receive Likes from close friends (73% “want” or “really want”), romantic partners (60%), and family other than parents (50%) (see Figure 6). On the other hand, people least want to receive Likes from people they don’t know (34%), potential employers or professional contacts (25%), and managers/teachers/ supervisors (24%).

Individual differences in caring about Likes

There are a number of psychological traits that influence the extent to which people care about getting Likes on Facebook. Table 1 shows three regressions estimating responses to three survey questions about (1) the importance of getting enough Likes, (2) whether people feel bad if they don’t receive enough Likes, and (3) whether they think they receive more Likes than their friends.

All three models control for age, gender, friend count, and the number of days in the past month the participant logged in to Facebook. Each model includes self -esteem, self-monitoring, extraversion, and Facebook relationship maintenance behaviors. Correlation between the scales was low (max r = .37 between extraversion and self- esteem). The third regression includes an additional binary variable indicating whether a person actually received more Likes per post than his or her friends. All continuous independent variables except for age were standardized (age was only centered), and friend count was logged base 2 to control for skew and then standardized.

 

    FIG. 6: PREFERENCES FOR LIKES FROM DIFFERENT TYPES OF FACEBOOK FRIENDS.

	Importance of getting		Feel bad if don’t get		Perception of # Likes
					received compared to
	enough Likes		enough Likes
					friends
Variable	β	SE	β	SE	β	SE
Intercept	1.90 **	.03	2.12**	.03	−.23 **	.03
Self-esteem	−.14**	.03	−.23**	.03	.09 **	.02
Self-monitoring	.20 **	.02	.28**	.03	.02	.02
Extraversion	−.01	.03	−.05	.03	.16 **	.02
FB Relationship Maintenance	.09 **	.03	−.02	.03	.05 *	.02
Age	−.00	.00	−.00	.00	.01 **	.00
Gender	.09	.05	−.00	.05	−.02	.04
Friend Count (Log2)	.18 **	.03	.10**	.03	.20 **	.02
# of days logged in over the	−.04	.02	.01	.03	.07 **	.02
past month
Friends receive more Likes per					.27 **	.05
post
Adj. R-squared	.09		.12		.19

N = 1996; * = p < .01, ** = p < .001

Table 1. Models predicting (1) importance of getting enough Likes, (2) feeling bad about not getting enough Likes, and (3) perception of the # of Likes received compared to friends’ Likes received.

DISCUSSSIONS:

about half of participants reported that they did care to some extent about getting enough Likes, suggesting that the number of Likes may be more important if a certain minimum is not met. Of the people who cared about getting enough Likes, about half of them received more than enough, while the other half received too few by their standards. When asked how many Likes was “enough”, people tended to have a rationale for this number, which was higher than their typical number of Likes by about 9 Likes. This is possibly due to the Like paradox whereby one’s friends get more Likes than one does, or the feed ranking algorithm showing people content that receives a lot of Likes.  The finding that some people are not getting what they consider to be enough Likes on their posts has implications for Facebook in particular, and for SNSs more generally. For instance, the pressure to get enough Likes that some people feel could be reduced by providing other social cues. This could be through development of alternative one-click actions that aren’t public-facing, or signals such as “read receipts” to provide more insight to audience composition. The pressure to get enough Likes could be also be reduced by encouraging people to share with specific subsets of friends, like in a closed group or on a specific friend’s wall. Alternatively, other SNSs have addressed their versions of the Friend paradox and/or Like paradox in other ways. For example, Snapchat does not show the amount of feedback on others’ content and feedback is provided in other ways (namely, content production of one’s own). The authors have also shown that self-esteem, self-monitoring, and engaging in relationship maintenance behaviors were all related to perceptions and attitudes about Likes.

REFERENCE:

For further reading, you may refer the paper “What’s in a Like? Attitudes and behaviors around receiving Likes on Facebook” by Lauren Scissors, Moira Burke, Steven Wengrovitz .web link