PSYC 1030: Psychology Report - Social Media and Personality

This report critically appraises the article "Social media, texting, and personality: A test of the shallowing hypothesis" by Annisette and Lafreniere (2017). The study, published in Personality and Individual Differences, investigates the "shallowing hypothesis," which posits that social media and texting lead to a decline in reflective thought. The study involved 149 undergraduate students and used surveys to assess social media usage, personality traits (BFI), life goals, and reflective thinking. Results indicated a negative association between social media usage and reflective thought, as well as a link between social media use and shallow life goals. The report highlights the study's implications, limitations (e.g., lack of hypothesis testing details and consideration of confounding factors), and the potential impact of social media on individuals' sociological and personal perspectives. The research provides valuable insights into the psychological effects of digital communication, prompting further investigation into the nuanced relationship between technology and human cognition.

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

2INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY
The participants of this study were 149 undergraduate student where 129 females, 19
males and 1 transgender. These participants are registered in the psychology participant pool
of a medium-sized Canadian university. As inclusion criterion it has been added that the
participants should be cell-phone users with texting capabilities.
Materials and measures
The participants were provided with survey questionnaire where had to answer the
question regarding texting and social media usage by selecting the frequency of social media
usage. The 44-item BFI were used to assess the five different personality dimensions of the
participants. 58 item Life goals inventory questionnaire was used along with 12 item
reflection questionnaire and demographic questionnaire.
Procedure of study
Participants were provided with consent form through website and after receiving the
acknowledgement the survey was conducted through online platform. For presenting the
digital survey form, an online platform was hosted by secure server. The survey procedures
took around 30 minutes on average for each participant.
Description of the result
From the study results it has been found that there is a significantly negative
association between the frequency of social media usage and reflective thoughts within the
students. It has been also found that frequency of using social media based texts has negative
association with importance of life goal and reflective morale life goals. However, the
duration of using social media is significantly associated with the shallow social image and
hedonism.
Implication of the research

3INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY
The structure, presentation and content of this research are transparent, authentic and
validated. The result found from this research showed that using social media can
significantly influence the reflective perspectives as well as the sense of morale in individual.
Depending on the situation, this result can be interpreted as evidence to support the fact that
high intensity social media usage can change the sociological and personal perspective and
morale of future generation.
Limitation and future research
The major limitation of this study is that the study did not present the hypothesis
testing procedure individually are clearly. Some hypotheses were ignored in the data
presentation and analysis section. This study did not neutralise any confounding factor such
as age of the participant, social background, economical background and others. The
association of reflective through with other demographic variables were not analysed in this
paper. This paper neglected all instrumental bias and confounding factors as well.

4INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY
Reference
Annisette, L. E., & Lafreniere, K. D. (2017). Social media, texting, and personality: A test of
the shallowing hypothesis. Personality and Individual Differences, 115, 154-158.