Benefits of facebook

Posted by Kama Yasa on 28th January, 2013

Social media activity can be used as a diagnostic tool in psychology. Profile of a person in the Facebook page may reveal signs of mental illness that may not always appear in the examination session with a psychiatrist. "For example, questionnaires are often dependent on a person's memory that may not be accurate," said researcher Elizabeth Martin, a psychologist at the University of Missouri doctoral.

Martin and his team recruited more than 200 students and asked them to complete a questionnaire to evaluate the level of extroversion, paranoia, enjoyment of social interaction and encouragement strange beliefs. The questions asked in the questionnaire, for example, whether they agreed with the statement: Some people can make me aware of them, just by thinking about my own.

Respondents were also asked to login to Facebook. They were told that they would have the option to black out some parts of the profile before it is printed for research purposes. "By asking patients to share their activities on Facebook, we can see how they express themselves naturally," explains Martin. In fact they seem to hide information about the psychological state at several Facebook activities.

Participants who demonstrate high levels of social anhedonia, a condition marked lack of social pleasures of social interaction will usually have a few friends on Facebook, photo sharing and communication bit of a rarity in these pages.

Meanwhile, those who conceal more Facebook activity before presenting them to the research profiles tend to hold odd beliefs and shows signs of perceptual aberrations. It's a sensory experience of someone who does not regularly. They also showed higher levels of paranoia.

"However, it should be noted that participants who had high paranoia value was not different from the low paranoia respondents in terms of the amount of personal information shared," the researchers wrote in their report in the journal Psychiatry research.

The findings suggest that high paranoia group might be more comfortable sharing information in social networking accounts than face directly in an interaction.

Last changed: 6th February, 2013 at 9:50 AM