Psychology of social media
Session 1: Intro & Psychological Underpinnings of Social Media and Social networks
Cognitive, emotional, behavioural aspects of social media use
Neurology, communication, marketing, psychology
Neurology: addiction, reward processing, social cognition activation
Marketing: building brand, connect with audience
Understand why and how so much of our everyday lives and modern culture came to be saturated
with these incredibly popular services.
Other questions that we will answer on the basis of science:
How are identities expressed and negotiated on social media? Can we still be ourselves in
anonymous online environments?
How many ‘friends’ can we actually connect with?
What is the point of sharing pictures that disappear?
Why do we want to add a sh*tload of hashtags to our Instagram pictures?
To what extent do social media and extremism go hand in hand?
Why and how should we swipe for sex?
Why do some cyberbully others on social media?
Forms of communication on social media
Social networking sites support multiple modes of communication:
- one-to-many and one-to-one,
- synchronous and asynchronous,
- Ephemeral (Instagram stories disappear) or permanent,
- textual and media-based
On most social network sites, these features can be public or more private: e.g., private messaging
or chat features that allow for more intimate dialogue
Likes, shares or comments as (usually permanently visible) forms of communication with the
networks of their Friends. These Friends of Friends may in turn be useful sources of novel
information and more diverse perspectives (depends on privacy settings).
Mass communication: transferring message to a large audience (receivers unknown to each other)
e.g. watching television (one to many)
Interpersonal communication: exchange of message from one person to another (sender and
receiver known to each other) e.g. conversation between two people face-to-face, direct message
(one to one)
Masspersonal communication: communication with large audiences that are not necessarily
anonymous, but also interaction and feedback in the communication process e.g. Facebook
comment, Tweet
1
,U&G approach: why people use social media (Whiting & Williams, 2013)
Design/methodology/approach: 25 in-depth interviews with individuals who use social media
What drives us to social media?
10 uses and gratification themes (applying uses and gratifications theory to social media):
- social interaction: most common
- information seeking: self-education and seeking out information, social media to get how-to-
instructions
- pass time: to occupy time and relieve boredom
- entertainment: e.g. escapism
- relaxation: relaxation provides relief from stress while entertainment focuses on enjoyment
- communicatory utility: facilitating communication, social media give people things to gossip
about
- convenience utility: convenient and accessible anytime and anywhere; being able to
communicate with a lot of people at once.
- Information sharing: two way information sharing ≠ information seeking
- Surveillance/knowledge about others
Biopsychological approach to social media
The desire to communicate is a primary human instinct .
Our relationship with technology (e.g., social media) has important neurological foundations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HffWFd_6bJ0
Dopamine = in brain functions as feel-good neurotransmitter -> chemical triggered by being in
love/affection
Important in learning (conditioning); Stimulus—Rewards; Pleasure in consummatory behavior;
‘Wanting’ and ‘Seeking’
Social interaction (digital or not) activates the dopaminergic reward circuits in the [subcortical brain].
It is important to note that these same circuits are implicated in addictive drug use (Belin et al.,
2009), compulsive video-gaming, and reward-seeking in general (West et al., 2015). These circuits
are also responsible for associative learning (associating two stimuli). For associative learning to
occur, an initial exposure to a new stimulus must occur alongside a reflex-eliciting stimulus. With a
smartphone/social media, nearly all notifications that the user encounters elicit a social value and
thus activate the dopaminergic reward circuit, leading the user to anticipate and seek these
rewarding notifications. With each occurrence this link grows stronger, and the user will anticipate
and seek these rewarding notifications, paving the road for habitual behavior.
2
, Thanks to dopamine, we ‘want’ and ‘seek’ rewarding notifications from technology/social media. It
can become an ‘addiction’. The unpredictability of rewards from social media reinforces these
dopaminergic reward systems.
Hypernatural monitoring (Veissière et al., 2018)
Method: based on evolutionary anthropology, social dispositions of all species and social rehearsal
theory of human cognition.
Important factor: ANTICIPATION of social rewards = Pavlovian anticipation: dog not only salivates in
presence of food (bell), but also in anticipation of the food’s arrival.
Dopaminergic surges typically occur before the reward or more precisely when a cue signals the
reliable delivery of a reward (B).
Because arousal decreases with frequent and predictable exposure, reward anticipation is a much
more powerful mediator of strong addictions than outcome evaluations of the stimulus itself.
Arousal more highly correlated with reward anticipation than with the reward itself.
When rewards become most unpredictable, arousal typically becomes negative, giving rise to
anxiety.
The beeps and buzzes of smartphone notifications provide just such an intermittent, variable,
unpredictable, but uniquely desirable schedule of rarely met anticipation rewards, thus providing
chaotic patterns of reward anticipation that trigger very strong modes of arousal. Because of the
deeply social nature of the rewards our phones make us crave, we often become entrenched in
vicious cycle of addiction.
We first process information through expectations based on prior learning to provide us with
predictions of situations and to act accordingly.
As our perceptual system constantly attempts to reduce uncertainty by computing abysmal amounts
of disordered information to make it predictable, discrepancies between prediction and perception –
prediction errors in mediating dysfunctional smartphone use in the lingo – become commonplace.
e.g. phantom phone, cravings, habitual phone checking.
Prediction errors can also occur in more subtle, but equally frequent and distressing way when
precise patterned expectations are not met: a beep that we hope may be a message from a loved
one or a Instagram ‘like’, for example, may turn out to be an incoming spam email or a message
from one’s boss about an overdue task.
Different dopamine activity for unpredictable social media notifications:
3
Session 1: Intro & Psychological Underpinnings of Social Media and Social networks
Cognitive, emotional, behavioural aspects of social media use
Neurology, communication, marketing, psychology
Neurology: addiction, reward processing, social cognition activation
Marketing: building brand, connect with audience
Understand why and how so much of our everyday lives and modern culture came to be saturated
with these incredibly popular services.
Other questions that we will answer on the basis of science:
How are identities expressed and negotiated on social media? Can we still be ourselves in
anonymous online environments?
How many ‘friends’ can we actually connect with?
What is the point of sharing pictures that disappear?
Why do we want to add a sh*tload of hashtags to our Instagram pictures?
To what extent do social media and extremism go hand in hand?
Why and how should we swipe for sex?
Why do some cyberbully others on social media?
Forms of communication on social media
Social networking sites support multiple modes of communication:
- one-to-many and one-to-one,
- synchronous and asynchronous,
- Ephemeral (Instagram stories disappear) or permanent,
- textual and media-based
On most social network sites, these features can be public or more private: e.g., private messaging
or chat features that allow for more intimate dialogue
Likes, shares or comments as (usually permanently visible) forms of communication with the
networks of their Friends. These Friends of Friends may in turn be useful sources of novel
information and more diverse perspectives (depends on privacy settings).
Mass communication: transferring message to a large audience (receivers unknown to each other)
e.g. watching television (one to many)
Interpersonal communication: exchange of message from one person to another (sender and
receiver known to each other) e.g. conversation between two people face-to-face, direct message
(one to one)
Masspersonal communication: communication with large audiences that are not necessarily
anonymous, but also interaction and feedback in the communication process e.g. Facebook
comment, Tweet
1
,U&G approach: why people use social media (Whiting & Williams, 2013)
Design/methodology/approach: 25 in-depth interviews with individuals who use social media
What drives us to social media?
10 uses and gratification themes (applying uses and gratifications theory to social media):
- social interaction: most common
- information seeking: self-education and seeking out information, social media to get how-to-
instructions
- pass time: to occupy time and relieve boredom
- entertainment: e.g. escapism
- relaxation: relaxation provides relief from stress while entertainment focuses on enjoyment
- communicatory utility: facilitating communication, social media give people things to gossip
about
- convenience utility: convenient and accessible anytime and anywhere; being able to
communicate with a lot of people at once.
- Information sharing: two way information sharing ≠ information seeking
- Surveillance/knowledge about others
Biopsychological approach to social media
The desire to communicate is a primary human instinct .
Our relationship with technology (e.g., social media) has important neurological foundations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HffWFd_6bJ0
Dopamine = in brain functions as feel-good neurotransmitter -> chemical triggered by being in
love/affection
Important in learning (conditioning); Stimulus—Rewards; Pleasure in consummatory behavior;
‘Wanting’ and ‘Seeking’
Social interaction (digital or not) activates the dopaminergic reward circuits in the [subcortical brain].
It is important to note that these same circuits are implicated in addictive drug use (Belin et al.,
2009), compulsive video-gaming, and reward-seeking in general (West et al., 2015). These circuits
are also responsible for associative learning (associating two stimuli). For associative learning to
occur, an initial exposure to a new stimulus must occur alongside a reflex-eliciting stimulus. With a
smartphone/social media, nearly all notifications that the user encounters elicit a social value and
thus activate the dopaminergic reward circuit, leading the user to anticipate and seek these
rewarding notifications. With each occurrence this link grows stronger, and the user will anticipate
and seek these rewarding notifications, paving the road for habitual behavior.
2
, Thanks to dopamine, we ‘want’ and ‘seek’ rewarding notifications from technology/social media. It
can become an ‘addiction’. The unpredictability of rewards from social media reinforces these
dopaminergic reward systems.
Hypernatural monitoring (Veissière et al., 2018)
Method: based on evolutionary anthropology, social dispositions of all species and social rehearsal
theory of human cognition.
Important factor: ANTICIPATION of social rewards = Pavlovian anticipation: dog not only salivates in
presence of food (bell), but also in anticipation of the food’s arrival.
Dopaminergic surges typically occur before the reward or more precisely when a cue signals the
reliable delivery of a reward (B).
Because arousal decreases with frequent and predictable exposure, reward anticipation is a much
more powerful mediator of strong addictions than outcome evaluations of the stimulus itself.
Arousal more highly correlated with reward anticipation than with the reward itself.
When rewards become most unpredictable, arousal typically becomes negative, giving rise to
anxiety.
The beeps and buzzes of smartphone notifications provide just such an intermittent, variable,
unpredictable, but uniquely desirable schedule of rarely met anticipation rewards, thus providing
chaotic patterns of reward anticipation that trigger very strong modes of arousal. Because of the
deeply social nature of the rewards our phones make us crave, we often become entrenched in
vicious cycle of addiction.
We first process information through expectations based on prior learning to provide us with
predictions of situations and to act accordingly.
As our perceptual system constantly attempts to reduce uncertainty by computing abysmal amounts
of disordered information to make it predictable, discrepancies between prediction and perception –
prediction errors in mediating dysfunctional smartphone use in the lingo – become commonplace.
e.g. phantom phone, cravings, habitual phone checking.
Prediction errors can also occur in more subtle, but equally frequent and distressing way when
precise patterned expectations are not met: a beep that we hope may be a message from a loved
one or a Instagram ‘like’, for example, may turn out to be an incoming spam email or a message
from one’s boss about an overdue task.
Different dopamine activity for unpredictable social media notifications:
3
