Psychology Research presented at the 2022 GC Academic Symposium

 

Once again, upper-level psychology majors in Psychology Research (R to L: Ben Troyer, Dorian Torres, Hayley Bickford, Professor Julie Reese, Jen Avila, Hannah Hackman, & Adhika Ezra) presented original research at the annual Goshen College Symposium. Their research built on the study from the previous year seeking to better understand “liking” behvior on social media. In the experimental design, they manipulated Instagram posts from students general feed (not confidential) in order to examine any patterns related to the message and the messenger. While no significant patterns were found, they learned much about the challenges of studying social media behavior and confidentiality, manipulating photos, encouraging research participants to complete all tasks, and persisting under difficult deadlines. One notable finding was that students “liked” more images when presented with a set of images (combination of original “liked”, manipulated “liked”, and not liked) than they did when simply instructed to go through their feed as they typically would.