When virtual contact is all you need: Subtle reminders of Facebook preempt social‐contact restoration after exclusion

In the Internet age, people who feel alone can use online social media to restore a sense of social connectedness. In the present experiment, participants were either excluded or included in Cyberball, a virtual ball-tossing game. Afterwards, a Facebook icon oracontrolicon(FlashPlayer)wasshownonthemarginofacomputerscreenduringa fillertask.Inthecontrolcondition,excluded (vs. included) participants subsequently expressed greater interest in social contact. This response to exclusion was absent after the subtle exposure to the Facebook icon. The effect of icon presentation was moderated by relational Facebook use: The interest in further social contact after exclusion was particularly low in participants who reported employing Facebook to maintain relationships to a greater (vs. lower) extent. In sum, our findings suggest that Facebook can dispense with compensatory affiliation attempts after exclusion, especially in more socially minded Facebook users. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Facebook is the world’s most popular online social network, a site of intense social activity. It has more than a billion users worldwide, and almost 750000000 people use Facebook on a daily basis (Facebook, 2014). Facebook use is driven largely by interpersonal interaction and relationship needs (Anderson, Fagan, Woodnutt, & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2012): People use Facebook to communicate and to maintain or strengthen relationships with others (Bonds-Raacke & Raacke, 2010). Online social networks such as Facebook have become particularly important sources of connectedness because they are permanently and conveniently available. Such sources of feeling connected are particularly needed when one faces feelings of loneliness and disconnection (Sheldon, Abad, & Hinsch, 2011). Indeed, people seem to use online social media for that purpose: When they feel isolated from others, they can benefit from feeling more socially included through participation in online social communities (Sheldon, 2008). In the present research, we examined whether reminders of social connectedness, specifically subtle reminders of Facebook use, dispense with using other means of restoring a sense of social connectedness.

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