The psychology of Facebook likes

Facebook's Hidden Psychology: Why We Like, Share, Comment, and Visit Again

Whenever I hop onto Facebook to do something commodity-specific— find a link I saved for later or see what’s passing on Buffer’s Facebook runner, maybe—commodity strangeness happens. Despite my stylish intentions to stay on track and negotiate my thing, I get smelled in. Suddenly I'm checking my own announcements, looking at what’s been posted lately, and generally forgetting why I came to Facebook in the first place. This isn't entirely by accident. There's wisdom and psychology that explain why so many of us are glued to Facebook. Experimenters have discovered trends in the way that we perform every major action on Facebook—liking, posting, participating, opining, and indeed lurking.

And there’s a ton of psychology involved in what makes Facebook so seductive in the first place. Ten's a look at the psychology of Facebook and what makes us like, post, share, and keep coming back for more.

Why do we love Facebook so much? It gates the brain’s pleasure center.

Lots of studies have worked toward figuring out what exactly goes on in our smarts when we're sharing on social media—specifically, Facebook.

A recent study discovered a strong connection between Facebook and the brain’s price center, called the nexus accumbent. This area processes satisfying passions about effects like food, coitus, plutocracy, and social acceptance.

This area of the brain becomes active when we receive favorable feedback on Facebook. The lesser the intensity of our Facebook use, the lesser the price. Another fascinating study recorded physiological responses like pupil dilation in levies as they looked at their Facebook accounts to find that browsing Facebook can elicit what they call an inflow state, the feeling you get when you're completely and happily occupied with a design or new skill.

Why we "like" Identity, empathy, and practicality

Maybe the most fluently honored currency of Facebook is the "like."

According to Facebook

"Like ” is a way to give positive feedback or to connect with the effects you watch on Facebook. You can like content that your musketeers post to give them feedback or like a runner that you want to connect with on Facebook.

When the Pew Research Center surveyed thousands of Americans about their social media lives, they discovered that 44 percent of Facebook druggies "like" content posted by their musketeers at least once a day, with 29 doing so several times per day. So what makes us like, or not like, a particular status, print or runner? Is there a system to relish? Then there are some reasons why we like

It's a quick and easy nod.

Perhaps the easiest way to figure out what such a thing means to us is to stop using it. That’s what Elan Morgan did in a 2-week trial she told Medium. That’s what she discovered.

Similar is a quiet nod of support in a busy area. It’s the easiest of yeses, I agree, and me too. I actually felt stings of guilt over not liking some updates, as though the absence of my particular Like would restate as a disapprobation or a withholding of affection. I felt as though my capability to communicate had been halted. The Like function has saved me so important comment-codifying over the years that I probably could have written a veritably quippy, war- and peace-length novel by now. ”

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To affirm a commodity about ourselves. One element of Facebook that we may not realize is how frequently we use the Like button to affirm a commodity about ourselves. In a study of more than 58,000 people who made their likes public through a Facebook app, experimenters discovered that likes could prognosticate a number of identification traits that druggies hadn't bared.

"People's "likes" were fed into a computer, which was used to pull information from hidden pet lists and evaluate specific characteristics, like a person's homosexuality or 95% whiteness. With 88 delicacy, and indeed linked actors as Democrats or Republicans with 85 delicacy. The'likes'list prognosticated gender with 93 delicacies and age could be reliably determined 75 of the time. ”

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To express virtual empathy and occasionally we like to show solidarity or connection with a friend or familiarity with their way of thinking. Social media can be a way of gaining "virtual empathy," and that empathy can have real-world counteraccusations.

A study reported in Psychology Moment showed that spending more time using social networks and engaging in instant communication exchanges prognosticated more capability to be virtual humane and that virtual empathy was a good index of being suitable to express real-world empathy.

Because it’s practical, we'll get commodities in return.

When it comes to how we choose to like brands and companies, the provocation is a bit simpler. A Synapse study found that most people make these decisions grounded on practical reasons, like wanting to admit tickets and regular updates from companies they like.

Marketing takeaway Likes are the penny of social media currency—spend them freely if you like, but don't anticipate too much in return.

Why do we note

The answer to this bone may feel kind of egregious, we note when we've got something to say!

One intriguing effect of entering commentary is how our smarts react to those as compared to likes. Moira Burke, who's studying 1,200 Facebook drugs in an ongoing trial, has found that particular dispatches are more satisfying to receivers than the one-click communication of likes. She calls them "composed communication."

Indeed, better than transferring a private Facebook communication is this semi-public discussion, the kind of back-and-forth in which you half ignore the other people who may be harkening in. "People whose musketeers write to them semi-publicly on Facebook experience a decrease in loneliness," Burke says.

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Elan Morgan, mentioned before for her trial of quitting likes for 2 weeks, set up a fresh benefit to prioritizing opining over "relax"—it effectively retrained the Facebook algorithm to give her more of the content she wanted.

"After I stopped liking everything on Facebook and started voicing my opinions more, my feed has relaxed and become more conversational. It’s like all the shouty attention-getters were steered out of the room as soon as I stopped apropos asking for those kinds of updates by using the Like function. ”

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Marketing takeaways and commentary are important emotional drivers. Make the most of them by engaging frequently with your Facebook community and replying to suckers' comments to keep the discussion going.

Why do we post status updates?

A Pew Research study shows that although druggies "like" their musketeers' content and comment on prints fairly constantly, most don't change their own status that frequently. 10 of the Facebook druggies change or modernize their own status on Facebook on a daily basis streamlining their status several times per day. 25 percent of Facebook addicts say that they never change or modernize their own Facebook status.

So why do many of us take the time to modernize our status on Facebook? What's the provocation, and what are we hoping to get out of the experience? Then’s the wisdom behind posting to Facebook.

Advertising makes us feel connected.

Experimenters at the University of Arizona covered a group of scholars and tracked their "loneliness situations" while posting Facebook status updates.