SOCIAL NETWORKING

Lola & Kathy

My current personal Facebook profile picture!

In most cases, your profile photo on Facebook tells viewers what they need to know to form an impression of you – no words are necessary, new research suggests.  On the right is the profile photo that I am currently using on Facebook, what are your impressions????

College students who viewed a Facebook photo of a fellow student having fun with friends rated that person as extraverted – even if his profile said he was “not a big people-person.”

“Photos seem to be the primary way we make impressions of people on social networking sites,” said Brandon Van Der Heide, lead author of the study and assistant professor of communication at Ohio State University.

The exception is when a photo is out of the ordinary or shows someone in a negative light. In that case, people do use profile text to help interpret what kind of person is shown in the profile.

“People will accept a positive photo of you as showing how you really are. But if the photo is odd or negative in any way, people want to find out more before forming an impression,” he said

Van Der Heide conducted the study with Jonathan D’Angelo and Erin Schumaker, graduate students in communication at Ohio State. Their results appear in a recent issue of the Journal of Communication. [continue reading…]

facebook profileWhen it comes to job hunting, candidates no longer have to worry simply about their CV, interview skills and aptitude for psychometric tests, they also need to think about that drunken photograph or snide comment they put up on Facebook six months ago. However, there is a flip side to this which employers don’t seem to be aware of: they may be flouting the law.

These are the key findings from a study that Chartered Psychologist Rob Bailey, from OPP, will be presenting to delegates at the British Psychological Society’s Annual Occupational Psychology Conference at the Crowne Plaza hotel, Chester, on Thursday 12 January 2012.

The study concludes that companies who use social networking sites (SNS) to vet potential new employees are at risk of falling foul of employment and data protection laws.

SNS screening has the potential to result in a charge of discrimination. How? [continue reading…]

Banish the thought that smart phones reduce stress levels. Whilst they do help people keep on top of their work load, new research has found smart phones are stressful because people get caught up in compulsively checking for new messages, alerts and updates.

Psychologist Richard Balding, from the University of Worcester, presents the findings from this study today, Thursday 12 January 2012, at the British Psychological Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology Conference, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Chester.

The study found that stress was associated with the personal use of smart phones but not with work. In particular, a relationship was found between stress and the amount of times the phone was checked, with the most stressed amongst us experiencing ‘phantom’ vibrations when in fact there have been no alerts. [continue reading…]

visualization of the social network of some of the persons speaking by phone

Static visualization of the social network of some of the persons speaking by phone (300,000 customers). Each circle is a customer and each line is a call between two customers. The network is very dense, a reflection of the small world of the social networks.

This study, which has analyzed around 9,000 million calls throughout almost a year period, is the first to identify these features of the communication process and to quantify their impact in the diffusion of information. “This is something very important in the processes such as the diffusion of commercial information, viral marketing and the market trends of products, but also in situations such as the spreading of rumours, opinions, policies, etc.”, explained one of the authors of this research, Esteban Moro,.

The study’s main conclusion, published in the scientific Journal, Physical Review E, is the finding that people communicate in bursts. In this way, our behaviour (in communication as well as in other activities) does not happen in a homogenous way over time, but rather there is universal behaviour in which there is no communication, followed by short intervals called bursts. “This aspect of human activity which has also been observed in other activities such as e-mail, web page visits and stock market operations governs communication between people,” , the researchers concluded. The effect of the bursts is that it slows down the information diffusion since the large periods of inactivity in the communication between two persons make it less likely that information is passed from one to the other. The study also highlights another important aspect of human communications: in group conversations, that is, although it is produced in bursts, these bursts happen at the same time among the members of the social group, which then accelerates information diffusion within these groups.

When, how much, and how do I communicate

The main objective of the research is to try to understand the temporal pattern of communication among persons in a social network. “As opposed to the static vision of a social network (who I interact with), our study seeks to understand when and how these social relations are produced,” Professor Esteban Moro elaborated. And with two purposes, the first being, to see if relations in a social network can be quantified better, that is, determine if the communication rhythm between two persons allows us to know something about the “strength” or characteristics of the relation (family member, acquaintance, friend, colleague, etc..); and the second, to investigate the impact of these rhythms on the propagation of information in social networks, in processes such as viral marketing, product recommendations, etc.

Source: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid – Oficina de Información Científica