1. Lauren A. Barlotta & David E. Szwedo James Madison University
Number of Facebook Friends and Coping Online as Predictors of Rejection Sensitivity
Lauren A. Barlotta & David E. Szwedo James Madison University
Lauren A. Barlotta
David E. Szwedo
Introduction
Measures
Number of Facebook Friends (Youth Age 21) –The total number of friends as coded from participants’ Facebook profiles.
Number of Wall Posts (Youth Age 21)—The total number of wall posts as coded from participants’ Facebook profiles.
“I have socialized online to make myself feel better when down or anxious” (Youth Age 21) – Item taken from a questionnaire about online behavior, rated on a 1-4 scale with higher scores indicating greater agreement with the statement.
Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire (Youth Age 16, 25) –Assessed with questions regarding how concerned or anxious participants would be in various situations and how they would expect others to respond. Sample item: “You ask your friend to do you a big favor.”
Figure 1. Regression model predicting relative changes in rejection sensitivity.
As of September 2014, 864 million people used Facebook every day to connect with others (Facebook, 2014)
Rejection sensitivity is the tendency to readily expect, readily perceive, and overreact to social rejection (Downey & Feldman, 1996)
Rejection sensitivity has a close link with internalizing symptoms, including higher levels of depressive symptoms, anxious symptoms, and lower social competence (Marston, Hare, & Allen, 2010)
People with social anxiety prefer to communicate online over face-to-face communication (Caplan, 2007), suggesting that this may be beneficial for such individuals
Having more friends online is linked to better psychological well-being for less socially accepted young adults (Szwedo, Mikami, & Allen, 2012)
It is unclear how different aspects of online relationships and reasons for using online communication may predict relative changes in rejection sensitivity
Results
Discussion
Hypotheses
Analyses first considered intercorrelations between variables of interest, presented in Table 1 below. Correlations suggested that having more Facebook friends and more Facebook wall posts from others was linked to lower levels of rejection sensitivity. Going online with the specific purpose to improve mood, however, was linked to high levels of rejection sensitivity.
In order to test hypotheses more rigorously, a multiple regression analysis was conducted including participant gender, family income, and baseline rejection sensitivity as control variables, and number of Facebook friends, number of Facebook wall posts, and going online to improve mood as predictor variables.
Results suggested that having more Facebook friends continued to predict a relative decrease in rejection sensitivity over time, whereas going online to improve mood predicted a relative increase in rejection sensitivity.
People with greater rejection sensitivity may be less likely to request friends on Facebook for fear that the other person might reject the friend request, or reject them if they begin communicating
People with greater rejection sensitivity may go online to compensate for their lack of relationships offline
However, simply going online with the intent to improve mood may not be enough to actually improve feelings of social rejection
Findings suggest that individuals who look to Facebook to form new relationships may be able to reduce their feelings of social rejection
People with more friends may not have as much rejection sensitivity because they feel like they have a support system
Having more Facebook friends will predict a relative decrease in rejection sensitivity
Having more Facebook wall posts from friends will predict a relative decrease in rejection sensitivity
Going online to socialize when down or anxious will predict a relative decrease in rejection sensitivity
Method
References
Participants (N=89)
Participants were drawn from a larger longitudinal study of adolescent social development (N=184). Participants represented those who had a Facebook page at the time of the study and consented for it to be coded for research purposes.
Gender: 35 males, 54 females
Race/Ethnicity: 64% Caucasian, 25% African American, 11% Mixed/Other
Family income: median= $40,000-$59,999
Assessed at age: 16, 21, 25
Table 1. Univariate statistics and intercorrelations between primary constructs
Caplan, S. (2007). Relations among loneliness, social anxiety, and problematic
Internet use. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 10(2), 234–242.
Downey, G. & Feldman, S.I. (1996). Implications of rejection sensitivity for
intimate Relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(6)
Facebook. (2014) Statistics. Facebook.com Retrieved from
Marston, E.G., Hare, A., & Allen, J.P. (2010). Rejection sensitivity in late
adolescence: Social and emotional sequelae. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 20 (4),
Szwedo, D.E., Mikami, A.Y., & Allen, J.P., (2012). Social networking site use
predicts changes in young adults’ psychological adjustment. Journal of
Research on Adolescence, 1, 1-14.