This just in from the Weather Desk: new study shows that the key to being popular on Facebook is to collect attractive friends!
Two researchers in the Netherlands conducted a study with 78 Facebook-using students to seek the answer to the question that keeps all of us up at night: what will happen if I don’t have enough sexy Facebook friends? Apparently, the answer to that question is that the more attractive your company is, the more attractive you are perceived to be.
“People are attracted by other people who look very healthy, happy and productive in a sexual sense,” Dr. Piet Kommers, one of the researchers, told AFP. “That is an accepted evolutionary law.”
A press release obtained by Earthsky briefly describes the design of the study:
The study simply involved mocking up Facebook profiles and asking the students to carry out a “hot or not” type assessment based purely on the visual appearance of the user’s profile photo within the page. The team found that someone is considered more likeable and seen as a potential friend when they are associated with good-looking friends.
Do you believe that? If you’re dismissive or cautious, that’s okay because it very well could be a trinket for the junk drawer. Nonetheless, researchers in the Netherlands published a new study in the International Journal of Web Based Communities on Monday so there could very well be some merit to this whole argument.
In all honesty, the findings of this study basically describe every example of too many teenagers in one place at one time that has ever existed (or, if you prefer, adults who still act like teenagers). It’s slightly disappointing to be reaffirmed that the interaction and biases of people on the internet reflects the way people act in person, but it shouldn’t be surprising in the slightest because the lowest common denominator, as with all let downs, is people.