Type of Submission
Poster
Keywords
Social media, conformity, likes, Instagram
Abstract
Social media has become the norm in westernized culture in many households. Many companies ranging from small to large organizations have employed multiple forms of social media in order to promote their business. Some companies are inclined to buy “likes” from other businesses in order that their product may seem more appealing to viewers online. The question that this study aimed to address whether participants were more likely to “like” a picture if the picture has more associated “likes”, rather than if it is a good picture as deemed by a professional photographer. This would follow the traditional conformity principles, but applied to the 21st century media.
In this study, 628 participants were surveyed from Cedarville University via an online survey that was sent out over email. In the survey, participants were shown 12 pairs of the photos and asked to choose which one that they would “like”. The photos of the same item were paired together of high and low quality, and larger and smaller number of “likes” were associated. Those photos included water bottle, laptop, Bluetooth speakers, and backpack. The high and low quality of the photos were determined based on the evaluation of a professional photographer and group of 35 students. The small number of “likes” was chosen at random and the larger number was calculated at a 150% increase.
The number of participants’ “likes” were tallied for each photo. Chi-square goodness of fit tests were calculated comparing the frequency of “likes “of each photo in each pair of the photos. Contrary to the prediction, the preliminary data analysis indicated that participants were significantly more to like the higher than lower quality photos regardless of the number of “likes” associated. But they were not significantly more to “like” either of the photos in a pair when the quality of both photos were the same.
In conclusion, the present study provide evidence that participants were more interested in the quality of a photo rather than the associated number of “likes” when they chose their preferred pictures. Limitations and implication of the current study would be discussed.
Campus Venue
Stevens Student Center
Location
Cedarville, OH
Start Date
4-20-2016 11:00 AM
End Date
4-20-2016 2:00 PM
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Included in
Industrial and Organizational Psychology Commons, Marketing Commons, Social Psychology Commons
The Motivation to “Like”: Do “Likes” Cause Conformity on Social Media?
Cedarville, OH
Social media has become the norm in westernized culture in many households. Many companies ranging from small to large organizations have employed multiple forms of social media in order to promote their business. Some companies are inclined to buy “likes” from other businesses in order that their product may seem more appealing to viewers online. The question that this study aimed to address whether participants were more likely to “like” a picture if the picture has more associated “likes”, rather than if it is a good picture as deemed by a professional photographer. This would follow the traditional conformity principles, but applied to the 21st century media.
In this study, 628 participants were surveyed from Cedarville University via an online survey that was sent out over email. In the survey, participants were shown 12 pairs of the photos and asked to choose which one that they would “like”. The photos of the same item were paired together of high and low quality, and larger and smaller number of “likes” were associated. Those photos included water bottle, laptop, Bluetooth speakers, and backpack. The high and low quality of the photos were determined based on the evaluation of a professional photographer and group of 35 students. The small number of “likes” was chosen at random and the larger number was calculated at a 150% increase.
The number of participants’ “likes” were tallied for each photo. Chi-square goodness of fit tests were calculated comparing the frequency of “likes “of each photo in each pair of the photos. Contrary to the prediction, the preliminary data analysis indicated that participants were significantly more to like the higher than lower quality photos regardless of the number of “likes” associated. But they were not significantly more to “like” either of the photos in a pair when the quality of both photos were the same.
In conclusion, the present study provide evidence that participants were more interested in the quality of a photo rather than the associated number of “likes” when they chose their preferred pictures. Limitations and implication of the current study would be discussed.
