You stalk your ‘loser’ Facebook friends to feel better – study

MANILA, Philippines – You’re having a crummy day. You made one flub after another at your team presentation, or you spotted your ex having coffee with someone categorically hotter. After posting a cryptic angry status post on your Facebook timeline, you find yourself checking the profiles of friends you think have it worse off: the girl who hasn’t had a boyfriend since birth; the guy who lost his life savings on a bum start-up. 

It would seem like you’re doing this to make yourself feel better about your own shortcomings, to tell yourself that you still have it better than others, and a recent study suggests this might really be the case. 

To conduct the study, researchers Benjamin K. Johnson and Silvia Knoblock-Westerwick of Ohio State University first primed 168 student test subjects to be in either a good or a bad mood, using a fake test that graded them either “excellent” or “terrible,” regardless of their actual answers. 

Then, these subjects were tasked to use a fake social networking site called SocialLink, which allowed them to check out profiles of 8 different fake people. Each fake person differed in terms of their attractiveness and financial success. The experiment revealed that the subjects in a bad mood tended to look at the profiles of those with low attractiveness and financial success. In turn, those in a good mood chose to gander at profiles on the opposite side of the spectrum.

The study, then, poses that this behavior is a means of comparing yourself to other people in order to manage your current mood. If you feel superior, you liken yourself to people you find superior; and if you feel inferior, you contrast yourself from people you find inferior.

The findings will officially come out in the journal Computers in Human Behavior’s December issue. – Rappler.com

Are you guilty of this behavior? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!