<p>Having a profile on the social networking site Facebook may help boost your self-esteem and even affect your behaviour, a first-of-its-kind study has found.<br /><br /></p>.<p>A Facebook profile is an ideal version of self, full of photos and posts curated for the eyes of family, friends and acquaintances, researchers said.<br /><br />The study shows that this version of self can provide beneficial psychological effects and influence behaviour.<br /><br />Catalina Toma, a University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor of communication arts, used the Implicit Association Test to measure Facebook users' self-esteem after they spent time looking at their profiles, the first time the social psychology research tool has been used to examine the effects of Facebook.<br /><br />The test showed that after participants spent just five minutes examining their own Facebook profiles, they experienced a significant boost in self-esteem. The test measures how quickly participants associate positive or negative adjectives with words such as me, my, I and myself.<br /><br />"If you have high self-esteem, then you can very quickly associate words related to yourself with positive evaluations but have a difficult time associating words related to yourself with negative evaluations," Toma said.<br /><br />"We wanted to know if there are any additional psychological effects that stem from viewing your own self-enhancing profile," says Toma, whose work will be published in the journal Media Psychology.<br /><br />Toma found that self-esteem boost that came from looking at their profiles ultimately diminished participants' performance in the follow-up task by decreasing their motivation to perform well.<br /><br />After people spent time on their own profile they attempted fewer answers during the allotted time than people in a control group, but their error rate was not any worse.<br /><br />Toma said the results are consistent with self-affirmation theory, which claims that people constantly try to manage their feelings of self-worth.<br /><br />"Performing well in a task can boost feelings of self-worth," Toma says. "However, if you already feel good about yourself because you looked at your Facebook profile, there is no psychological need to increase your self-worth by doing well in a laboratory task," said Toma.<br /><br />But Toma cautions against drawing broad conclusions about Facebook's impact on motivation and performance based on this particular study, as it examines just one facet of Facebook use.</p>
<p>Having a profile on the social networking site Facebook may help boost your self-esteem and even affect your behaviour, a first-of-its-kind study has found.<br /><br /></p>.<p>A Facebook profile is an ideal version of self, full of photos and posts curated for the eyes of family, friends and acquaintances, researchers said.<br /><br />The study shows that this version of self can provide beneficial psychological effects and influence behaviour.<br /><br />Catalina Toma, a University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor of communication arts, used the Implicit Association Test to measure Facebook users' self-esteem after they spent time looking at their profiles, the first time the social psychology research tool has been used to examine the effects of Facebook.<br /><br />The test showed that after participants spent just five minutes examining their own Facebook profiles, they experienced a significant boost in self-esteem. The test measures how quickly participants associate positive or negative adjectives with words such as me, my, I and myself.<br /><br />"If you have high self-esteem, then you can very quickly associate words related to yourself with positive evaluations but have a difficult time associating words related to yourself with negative evaluations," Toma said.<br /><br />"We wanted to know if there are any additional psychological effects that stem from viewing your own self-enhancing profile," says Toma, whose work will be published in the journal Media Psychology.<br /><br />Toma found that self-esteem boost that came from looking at their profiles ultimately diminished participants' performance in the follow-up task by decreasing their motivation to perform well.<br /><br />After people spent time on their own profile they attempted fewer answers during the allotted time than people in a control group, but their error rate was not any worse.<br /><br />Toma said the results are consistent with self-affirmation theory, which claims that people constantly try to manage their feelings of self-worth.<br /><br />"Performing well in a task can boost feelings of self-worth," Toma says. "However, if you already feel good about yourself because you looked at your Facebook profile, there is no psychological need to increase your self-worth by doing well in a laboratory task," said Toma.<br /><br />But Toma cautions against drawing broad conclusions about Facebook's impact on motivation and performance based on this particular study, as it examines just one facet of Facebook use.</p>