Research operations in product development
THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON TRANSFERENCE
2016
A case study on the possible effects that the breaking of shared realities has on transference through the social media platform Twitter
CREATING THE EXPERIMENT
During my Master's program, I worked with a professor who wanted to take her expertise in the psychological process of transference and my experience studying social media and it's effect on psychology to create an experiment looking at social media's effect on transference.
I was tasked with researching transference and finding different ways to integrate the topic of social media with the topic of transference.
My Duties:
Background research
Creating and editing survey questions, survey instructions, and notes on progress
Presenting each process of the experiment to a research methods class
Writing a 25-page paper about the experiment and the future applications
BACKGROUND
Transference: a process that occurs when a person is introduced to a new person who shares a resemblance to a Significant Other (SO). The memory of a person’s SO is activated and the significant other’s traits and characteristics are transferred to the newly introduced person who resembles them.
A Shared Reality: when two people share the same value about a certain subject. Any shared belief (such as religion, political ideology, and other social and cultural beliefs) can be recognized as a shared reality.
Shared realities can be an important part of a SO relationship. Evidence shows that people focus on shared realities with others because it allows them to view the world more stably.
When someone resembles a SO and transference occurs, we may be more likely to view them in a favorable view when doing certain actions then when someone who does not resemble a SO (and transference does not occur).
The proposed study would have the participants come in for two different sessions.
METHODS
Interviews in session one:
Participants would answer questions about their political views on seven different topics, shown in the first two images shown below.
The answers would be used to determine their political values, whether they were conservative or liberal, and would be used to choose what political information to present each participant in session 2.
Then the participants would be asked about an SO person in their life, someone who they are very close to and someone who they interact with a lot, the survey presented in the third image below.
Then they would be asked about their SO's political views, in the same way they were asked about their own political views.
At the end of the session, the participants would be asked if they want to participate in a different study from a different graduate student in the lab, in order to make the participants think that the two sessions are unrelated. Participants are about 80% likely to sign up for the "second study."
Then we would take the answers they gave in session one to create a profile of a person using the Transference paradigm that is used in many transference studies, primarily taken from a research paper of Andersen & Chen (1995).
METHODS: PERSONAS
Interviews in session two:
Participants from session one would come back two weeks later for a supposedly different study about how people interpret and describe social media posts.
We would then present the participants with different personas, shown on the left.
The process of session two would follow these steps:
The participants would be shown 10 statements, one at a time on a computer about the new person. For the SO-primed new person, four of the sentences would be taken from the irrelevant traits from session 1 and six of the sentences would come from the positive and negative statements
For the non-SO resembled new person, all sentences would come from another participants SO from the experiment.
After meeting the new person, participants viewed their Twitter page, which showcased their political views through tweets and retweets on various topics. The shared reality between the person resembling the significant other (SO) and the non-SO person was disrupted by the new person's tweets and retweets expressing opposing political views. This process was applied to seven political topics (Abortion, Drugs, Illegal immigrants, Taxes, Social Security, Climate Change, and Crime), resulting in a total of 21 tweets.
Subsequently, participants were asked to select 3-5 tweets/retweets to comment on, sharing their feelings and potential responses, such as following or blocking the new person on Twitter. The participants' average likelihood to engage in friendly acts (follow) or aggressive acts (block) toward the new person was recorded on a 1-7 scale. This measurement helped assess their attitudes toward the new person based on political values and their discomfort towards them.
OUR GOALS
Our predictions:
Participants might experience low aggressiveness towards a new person when the shared reality is broken between the participant and the SO primed new person,
Participants might experience high aggressiveness towards a new person when the shared reality is broken between the participant and the yoked SO-primed new person.
Our measurements:
We would take the average response of likeliness to commit a friendly act (to follow) or an aggressive act (to block) towards the newly introduced person.
Their response would be used to measure their attitudes towards the new person based on their political values.
NEXT STEPS
Our original plan was to run the study during my second year of the Master's Program, but my Professor was unable to continue because she was leaving the University, and she was the only Professor in the program who would be able to run a study that looked into transference. The next step would to be to run the experiment.
Possible implications:
The results could help us gain a more understanding how people interact with each other on twitter and other social media platforms.
How purposefully using transference could effect how people view political messages online.
One possible usage would be political figures doing polling to gather information on a particular groups close relationships and their SO's qualities, and then to frame an advertising campaign in order to make the candidate resemble the qualities of a likely SO to the voters of a particular area or community.
TESTIMONIALS:
Matt was a student of mine in the MA Psychology Program, and I mentored him on a research project outside of class. He was a dedicated and passionate student. He does not shy away from challenges. He took direction and instruction well, and was very communicative. The masters program provided him with great training on research methods and statistics, and I saw great growth in his skills. I have no doubt about his abilities to assist on research projects. I'm happy to speak to any one interested in working with Matt about my experiences working with him.
Elizabeth Przybylinski, Clinical Assistant Professor at NYU, Principle Investigator