New study finds looking at your own Facebook profile will boost self-esteem but make you lazy in an exam
Facebook makes you confident. That’s the message from researchers at University of Wisconsin-Madison who found that scrolling through your own profile for just five minutes could improve your self-esteem at a “deep, unconscious level.”
Catalina Toma, an assistant professor of communication arts at the University, told ABC News: “Most have a very large audience of friends and they selectively present the best version of self, but they do so in an accurate manner.”
For the study, Toma asked a group of participants to look at their Facebook profiles and take an Implicit Association Test, measuring how quickly people associate positive or negative adjectives with words including me, my, I and myself.
Toma said: “We had people look at their own profiles for five minutes and found that they experienced a boost in self-esteem in a deep, unconscious level,” she said.
“Facebook gives you a real good image of yourself, but you then don't have to look for that in other ways.”
However, the research also found that those who spent time on their Facebook profiles didn't try as hard as the control group to perform well on the exam.
“Your motivation to perform well might be reduced because you already feel really good,” explained Toma.