COGNITIVE availability heuristic - chou and edge

researchers name(s)

chou

edge

year

2012

aim of study

to test the influence of the availability heuristic on how Facebook users evaluate themselves in comparison to other people

topic

availability heuristics

participants

opportunity sample of 425 US undergraduate students

procedure

participants completed a survey including a 10-point Likert scale allowing them to indicate how strongly they agreed with a series of statements such as:

• “many of my friends have a better life than me”

• “many of my friends are happier than me”

they also indicated how many hours a week they spent on Facebook, how long they had used FB, the average time spent actually with friends per week and the number of ‘friends’ on Facebook whom they did not actually know personally

findings

• participants who spent the most hours per week on Facebook were more likely to agree that ‘other people are happier than me’

• by contrast, those who spent the most time out with friends in the ‘real world’ were very unlikely to feel that ‘other people are happier than me’ or ‘many of my friends have a better life than me’

• interestingly, those participants who reported having a larger number of contacts not personally known to them were very likely to agree that ‘many of my friends have a better life than me’ but did not feel that other people were happier

additional information?

• quasi experiment

• more time spent on Facebook means that examples of other people engaged in exciting, fun and social activities are more ‘available’ - and Facebook users are very likely to compare their own lives to these examples

• in addition, they found that we over-estimate the extent to which the behaviour of other people reflects their disposition rather than their situation

• for example, we tend to think “Mary is always posting exciting status updates because she is much more fun than me” rather than “Mary is away on holiday at the moment; of course, she is posting lots of interesting things”