Social Status and Health

This is a tricky area due to various concerns about endogeneity etc, but there are some papers which provide experimental evidence for the relationship between social status and susceptibility to illness. In each of the following participants were exposed to the cold virus and tracked to examine which individuals developed symptoms. The first, Sociability and Susceptibility to the Common Cold (Cohen et al 2003), found that sociability was negatively associated with the probability of developing a cold following infection. The second, Objective and Subjective Socioeconomic Status and Susceptibility to the Common Cold (Cohen et al 2008), found that subjective SES was negatively associated with the development of symptoms. Particularly interesting was the fact that this was independent of objective SES. There was some evidence that the relationship was mediated by sleeping patterns. You still have to wonder exactly what “sociability” and socioeconomic status are measuring, but interesting all the same.

Does Facebook Hurt Your Grades? Can Twitter Make You Smarter? What About YouTube?

Does Facebook hurt your grades? This may be the question that parents everywhere will soon be asking their children. There is the argument that students cannot blame Facebook because if Facebook did not exist, they would find another distraction. However, Facebook users under parental supervision will probably have scant praise for the researchers from Ohio State University who have shown that the majority of students who use Facebook every day are underachieving by as much as an entire grade, compared with those who shun the site. See the story in the Times here.

The researchers discovered that students who spend their time accumulating friends, chatting and “poking” others on the site may devote as little as one hour a week to their academic work. “It is the equivalent of the difference between getting an A and a B,” said one of the researchers, Karpinski. Of course, this does not account for selection bias and unobserved characteristics. Also, the researchers have not yet analysed whether a student’s grades continue to deteriorate the longer he or she spends on Facebook. So the same individuals have not been tracked over time.

A new YouTube offering may take up as much of students' time as a Facebook account, though it may help their grades. "YouTube University" has gathered together all the video channels of the universities and colleges it's partnered with over the years and put them under the YouTube EDU banner. One of the videos (below) is from the University of Minnesoata and is about using Twitter, Wikis and instant messaging in the classroom.

Educational researcher Cynthia Lewis says that the use of social media in the classroom serves two purposes. The first is catching the attention of students and increasing their participation in the classroom. The second is preparing them for communicating in tomorrow's new media landscape. She says that "21st century literacies are all about digital media".





While it may be the case that too much Facebook can hurt your grades, doing the right amount of social networking through online platforms can help your career and is also a lot of fun. Plus, it may help learning in the classroom.

To Tweet, or Not to Tweet

We have discussed the technology developed by Twitter.com before (here), with a particular emphasis on the information that can be generated from the search tool (using applications from Summize Labs). Since then Summize Labs was acquired by Twitter (see the story from the Twitter blog here). One used to be able to enter a topic in the Summize Labs search engine to find up-to-the-second "tweets" about that topic, then automatically analyze the tweeted attitudes. According to the story on the Twitter blog, they said they would add search and its related features to their core offering. So far, all I can see available is a limited search application (here), which also shows some trending topics. if anyone is aware of other features that are currently available, I would be interseted to hear about them.

Besides using Twitter data in novel applications, we have also discussed offline how Twitter might be a useful tool at academic (and other types of) conferences. The essence of Twitter is not to provide data for social scientists; rather - it is about sending a series of thoughts - each of 140 characters or less - to a network of friends (using a laptop or mobile phone). Importantly, anyone can listen in - you can send a universal text message to the whole planet - as James Harkin describes it in a recent Times article. The article also covers an apparent backlash against the use of Twitter. The criticism is "why would anyone want to dedicate time informing everyone in the world what he or she is up to at any given moment?" The answer, is the idea of “being in the loop”.

A Sunday Times article from yesterday (by Andy Pemberton) further develops the criticisms that are being made about the use of Twitter. According to Pemberton, it’s a fair question to ask "what kind of person shares information with the world the minute they get it? And just who are the “followers” willing to tune into this rolling news service of the ego?" Pemberton mentions the suggestion by clinical psychologist Oliver James that “twittering stems from a lack of identity. It’s a constant update of who you are, what you are, where you are. Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity.” According to Dr David Lewis, a cognitive neuropsychologist and director of research based at the University of Sussex, “using Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognise you, you cease to exist."

The criticisms above may seem somewhat extreme to avid Twitter users - and maybe Twitter is just an added layer of online social capital, or a bit of fun, for most users. I've blogged recently (here and here) about personality and usage of online social networks such as Bebo or Facebook; a similar study on Twitter usage could be illuminating. Alain de Botton (author of Status Anxiety) offers the most sanguine comment in the article by Andy Pemberton: “Perhaps closeness is not always possible, or desirable. Twitter gives us another option. It says: I want to be in contact with you, but not too much. It’s the equivalent of sending a postcard.”

Finally, in terms of how Twitter may be useful for conferences and other activities, the Pemberton artcile mentions that companies such as Starbucks have been quick to recognise the marketing potential of Twitter; even think tanks such as the Institute for Public Policy Research have begun using twitter to publicise their activities.
Despite the criticism from some quarters, Twitter boasts 6m users — small compared to Facebook’s 150m — but its audience has surged by more than 1,000% in the past year. Right now, the San Francisco-based company that owns Twitter is valued at $250m, its inventors recently rejected an offer from Facebook to buy their company for $500m. The article by James Harkin is followed with a short piece by Mike Harvey, which contains five tips for those who wanted to start tweeting.

Personality and the consequences of social interaction for affect repair

Abstract
This study explores the interaction of extraversion and social interaction on affect repair. Following a negative affect induction, participants engaged in a neutral discussion task alone or in the presence of a pleasant and supportive confederate. Results reveal that extraversion predicted affect repair in the solitary condition with extraverts (vs. introverts) experiencing a greater enhancement of positive affect. In the social condition, extraversion did not predict repair; all individuals benefited from the interaction. Thus, when alone, introverts demonstrated a maladaptive affect repair profile that was abated in the presence of a supportive individual. Other results reveal that the social condition produced the largest affect repair. These findings suggest that, while extraverts exhibit more effective affect repair when alone, pleasant interaction facilitates affect repair for all individuals (even introverts).

The Day Reconstruction Method coupled with personality measures will demonstrate how such relationships operate in a real-world setting.

Augustine et al. (2008)

The benefits of being a copycat

Two fairly recent studies show that high self-monitors use mimicry, possible nonconsciously, to get along with others. Self-monitoring is also involved in controlling emotional reactivity and the expression of other personality characteristics. When predicting workplace fit high self-monitoring may be a more important factor than personality traits such as the Big Five (Barrick et al., 2005). On a related point I have recently just come across the concept of 'bounded emotionality' which seems to have been around for some time and described emotional control in organizations (Putnam & Mumby, 1993). In the DRM working was associated with the second lowest level of positive emotion (after commuting) indicating that there may be some truth to the contention. A recent study showing that traders with a higher level of emotional reactivity (both positive and negative emotion) demonstrated higher levels of performance would suggest that 'bounded emotionality' may be detrimental to employers
(MYEONG-GU SEO et al., 2007).

Self-monitoring and mimicry of positive and negative social behaviors

This study examined the role that self-monitoring plays in behavioral mimicry. Participants were exposed to videotaped targets who were laughing, yawning, frowning, or neutral in their expression. Participants’ behavioral mimicry while viewing the targets was recorded. It was hypothesized that higher self-monitors would show greater mimicry than lower self-monitors. It was also hypothesized that participants would respond differently to positive and negative target expressions. Participants who scored higher in self-monitoring did mimic the targets’ behaviors more often, and participants showed less mimicry of frowns than of laughs or yawns.

Self-Monitoring Without Awareness: Using Mimicry as a Nonconscious Affiliation Strategy

This research sought to extend the current conceptualization of self-monitoring by examining whether self-monitoring motives and behaviors can operate outside of conscious awareness. Two studies examined nonconscious mimicry among high and low self-monitors in situations varying in affiliative cues. Participants interacted with a confederate who shook her foot (Study 1) or touched her face (Study 2). In both studies, high self-monitors were more likely to mimic the confederate's subtle gestures when they believed the confederate to be a peer (Study 1) or someone superior to them (Study 2). Low self-monitors mimicked to the same degree across conditions. Thus, when the situation contains affiliative cues, high self-monitors use mimicry as a nonconscious strategy to get along with their interaction partner.

Bowling Alone, Drinking Together

Alcohol consumption may be associated to a rich social life, but its abuse might be related to a poor social life. This paper investigates whether alcohol consumption is a socially enjoyed good (a complement of social relations) or a substitute for social relations based on a large sample of Italian individuals in 2002 and 2005. In particular, it explores whether the answer changes between use and abuse, beer, wine and spirits, youth and adults, controlling or not for family influence and unobserved heterogeneity, and for various forms of social relations. Controlling for a great number of covariates and allowing for non linear and identity-specific family interaction effects, they find that alcohol consumption is a socially enjoyed good and that family influence is important for drinking behaviour.

http://www.decon.unipd.it/assets/pdf/wp/20070055.pdf