The studies each focused an different aspects of this phenomenon, revealing key insights about the dynamic:

1. Negative emotions are more private than positive emotions.
2. People underestimate the prevalence of negative experiences.
3. People underestimate negative emotions and overestimate positive ones for well-known peers.
4. Lower estimates of negative experiences predict greater loneliness; Higher estimates for positive experiences predict lower life satisfaction.

The underestimating/overestimating of peer emotions is tied to how much a person suppresses her own negative emotions.

The blogs and other media are probably doing some overestimating of their own by spotlighting these comments from the discussion:

… [S]ocial networking sites (e.g., facebook.com) may exacerbate common misperceptions of others’ emotional lives because of the complete control that users have over the public image they project to the world through their photo albums, status updates, friendship networks, and so forth.

This has been misinterpreted in headlines like Slate’s, “The Anti-Social Network: By helping other people look happy, Facebook is making us sad.”

There are some important caveats to note with this research. First, the sample targets first-year college students. The world view and relational fluency of adults with just 18 years under their belts is probably a significantly different context than older adults with larger and more diverse social networks. Second, there is also a likely difference between what negative perceptions a person might disclose to someone else about a peer and what that person might actually perceive on their own. Third, as that same Slate article points out: “This is correlation, not causation, mind you; it could be that those subjects who started out feeling worse imagined that everyone else was getting along just fine, not the other way around.”

While it is unlikely that Facebook is “making us sad,” this research does offer an opportunity to reflect on the impact design choices have on our ability to both share and recognize negative experiences. It is clearly an important ingredient for bonding and self-worth to understand that your troubles are not the only troubles in the world. Yet Facebook only offers a “Like” button, perhaps implicitly incentivizing reporting of news that will be liked. This doesn’t prevent social sharing services from being used in a more authentic manner, but it does reinforce the unhealthy belief that negative experiences shouldn’t be shared.

Authenticity is vital to self-affirmation, which in turn has been shown to lower defenses and open minds. On the surface, online profiles and status updates appear to be self-promotional, curated works that only show the best or even ideal experiences. However, the social aspect to sharing personal information in this manner serves as a safeguard against dishonesty—a worse outcome than being perceived as flawed is not being trusted by peers. People tend to be accurate about how they reflect their lives online.

The work done by Stanford shouldn’t be taken as justification against using social media, which some of the recent media articles seem to suggest. Instead, it might be a call to use it more frequently and authentically to let others know you are as human as they are.

References:

1. Jordan, A.H., Monin, B., Dweck, C.S., Lovett, B.J., John, O.P., and Gross, J.J. (2011). Misery has more company than people think: Underestimating the prevalence of others’ negative emotions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(1), pp. 120-135.
2. Toma, C.L. (2010). Affirming the self through online profiles: Beneficial effects of social networking sites. CHI 2010, pp 1749-1752.

Thanks to Mark Baltzegar for the tip.

What are we Twittering? (source: The Onion)

On Friday, Larry Chiang posted yet another list of how to leverage Twitter for marketing purposes. On the surface, there’s nothing sinister about what he wrote. It echoes and augments what Ed Dale termed side-by-side communication, developing a shallow but trusted relationship with others so as to make one’s message better received. Chiang is specifically examining Twitter as a tool for founders of startup companies when offering the following tips:

1. Don’t be afraid to Tweet above your head.
2. Watch your Twitter ratios.
3. Leverage what’s going on.
4. Move your Twitter conversation(s) off-line.
5. Migrate your real-world conversation to Twitter.
6. Time your tweets.
7. Pre-write some of your material.
8. Work the Twitter Room for product development.

My problem with this approach is that is undercuts one of the things that makes Twitter work: authenticity.

I am glad that marketers are embracing Twitter because, unlike other channels, each of us has near-complete control over what we see. A spammer can only gain a foothold in our tweet streams if we allow that message in by following him, and we can stop such messages at any point afterward simply by unfollowing. There are a few basic tips to identify a spammer—most notably an insanely imbalanced following-to-follower ratio—but one often overlooked one is authentic posting. Do the tweets reek of self-promotion?

For a channel dedicated to spreading millions of short posts daily about personal minutiae, sensitivity to self-promotion in Twitter may seem like an oxymoron. However, there is a difference between answering the core question—”What are you doing?”—and gaming the system. It’s a difference that is noticeable on some level. As spammers inevitably adapt to the technological and cultural constraints in Twitter, an “authenticity radar” will be used by members more and more to shut off unwanted messages.

The most interesting aspect of Chiang’s list is its dual nature when viewed in the lens of authenticity. It can be interpreted as inherently manipulative and false, a guide to inauthentic behavior. It can also be viewed as an encouragement, appeasing concerns about participation and transparency that support authentic posts. On my pessimistic days, the term marketing invokes only the former.

There is no right way to use Twitter (one of its many beauties). However, I think we as producers and consumers of content benefit greatly by reducing the list to one core mantra: Be Authentic.

A map of digital identity. (source: Fred Cavazza)

Anonymity is one of the pillars of online communication. The ability to become someone else, mask some part of yourself, or lurk in the shadows increases paths to participation. The dark side of anonymity is irresponsibility, and we have already witnessed other social networks tackle Jon Swift problems by censoring their own communities to strengthen legitimacy. Even as we collectively accumulate personal profile pages that express our real identities, however, there are initiatives emphasizing anonymous disclosures. The Experience Project is designed around anonymity, asking members of the two-year-old community to connect through their experiences rather than extending existing social circles. In the end, though, this approach is about lowering barriers for people who could not otherwise participate in discussions. The impact of what is shared is dependent on the relationships we form with the identities we assign to ourselves and others.

The consequence of self-disclosure centers around the resilience of information.

Twitter, a microblogging service that exploded to a million members in about a year, uses the SMS constraint of 140 characters to lower the barriers to entry for potential authors. It is much easier to conceive of sharing a simple sentence or two than several paragraphs. The custom nature of the personal information stream (everyone can decide whose content they want to follow) implies a sense of control. However, the reality of Twitter is that the content is public. Even with private streams—where a member can require a mutual handshake before someone else can see their posts—the act of sharing content with anyone exponentially increases the likelihood that information will reach a public audience. The age of the intelligent web is here, and innocuous posts made in a semi-protected context one day can give rise to unexpected revelations in the future.

This has implications on future career paths, as comments in a Web Worker Daily article last September attest. Tim O’Reilly expects a Web 2.0 backlash and a return to private data. Perhaps. At the start of the year, Duncan Riley published a poll asking, should some things remain private in the age of lifestreaming. The nature of that flawed question led to a predictable response—less than 10% of respondents said “No”—and false evidence that we disclose too much about ourselves. A more relevant line of questioning would be what kinds of information should be private, for ourselves and from others.

Being naked isn’t only about what you publish online. Dartmouth’s Alice Mathias wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece last fall that the only privacy setting in Facebook that mattered to her friends was the one revealing if they are logged in. She speculated that the ability to search anonymously is significantly more important than remaining anonymous when other people search: “If our ability to privately search is ever jeopardized, Facebook will turn into a ghost town.”

Rob May had another take on the professional cost of social networking. Using the life of economist and political scientist Joseph Schumpeter as an illustration, May observed:

The web makes it easier than ever to connect with new people, but the flip side is that it also keeps us connected to people from earlier times… people who may not understand or support our goals. Is it possible that in some instances, social networks hold us back? In earlier times students could go away to school and carve their own path, but now with old friends judging every move we make, are we likely to be less unique, less aggressive, and perhaps not live up to our creative potential?

Molly Holzschlag prefers the term authenticity to transparency, criticizing the later as implying a reality that may not be present. There is some degree of self-censorship that goes into any interaction with the world, be it this blog, my Twitter account, or a conversation I have on campus. Throughout it all, I aim for authenticity. My own hypothesis is that greater transparency leads to more empathic censorship, not decisions to omit based on fear or power. Being open requires more awareness of our networks, which leads to a higher consciousness about communication.

Keeping track of locals depends on accurate self-disclosure.

My interest in Twitter revolves largely around microblogging as a conduit for strengthening local community. I routinely seek out Bloomington-area authors, adding them to a master list in the Hoosier Twitosphere and following many of them. Sometimes, it is reciprocated and our social circles join. We inspire each other through this ambient connection, planting the seeds of more meaningful relationships capable of addressing business, emotional and intellectual needs. None of this is possible without a transparent culture willing to share something as small but significant as their location.

The value of local connections cannot be underestimated. The impact of transparency is routinely exhibited on Homeless Man Speaks, a blog about a man experiencing homelessness in Toronto, as transcribed by a neighbor:

So, of course, the guy gets out of the car, of course he’s pissed at me, and I’m telling you, he’s six-foot-something and he’s got biceps that could crack walnuts. So he looks at down me and says: ‘I know you. You’re homelessmanspeaks.com.’

Small steps. The journey begins by gaining awareness of those around you.

What information do you keep private? What should others keep private?