The Deductive Study of Psychology

Running head: INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY
PSYC 1030 Introduction to Psychology
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY
Introduction
In this report the article named “Social media, texting, and personality: Atest of the
shallowing hypothesis” authored by Logan E. Anniset te and Kathryn D. Lafreniere will be
critically apprised. The study was published in 2017 in the journal named “Personality and
Individual Differences”.
Purpose of the study
It is a deductive study that tested a psychological theory. The purpose of this study is
to test the “swallowing hypothesis” that states that certain types of social media components
such as texting and Facebook leads to a dramatic declination of regular ordinary reflective
thought of individuals which includes the cognitive and moral “shallowness”. The hypotheses
of this study were:
H1. Texting frequency will be positively associated with extraversion and neuroticism and
negatively associated with reflective thought.
H2. Texting frequency will be negatively associated with life goals in the morality domain.
H3. Life goals reflecting shallowness will significantly predict unique variance in texting
frequency, beyond what is explained by the personality variables.
H4. Social media usage will be positively associated with both extraversion and openness to
experience but will be negatively associated with neuroticism and reflective thought.
H5. Social media usage will be negatively associated with life goals in the morality domain.
H6. Life goals reflecting shallowness will significantly predict unique variance in
socialmedia usage, beyond what is explained by the personality variables.
Participants of study