My research comprises three broad areas in online/social media contexts, described below.
A list of my published research can be found on my Google Scholar page.
Self-Effects
Traditionally, studies on media effects have tended to ask, how does media selection or consumption affect audiences? But with the proliferation of social media today, a new line of research has emerged that reverses this traditional way of thinking. Research on self-effects asks, how does the sending of messages (e.g., on social media) influence the message senders themselves?
The basic idea is this: The things that people say publicly demand some social commitment, as people’s social media contacts may hold them accountable. How can we better understand the social and psychological mechanisms that lead to and result from social commitment? How can we apply this principle in order to, among other things, alter one’s self-concept, encourage healthy behaviors, or change negative attitudes?
Showing that one is confident, successful, having a good time, or good looking has become the norm on social media. People appear to lead perfect lives. But can these near-perfect online self-presentations ironically lead to negative outcomes: perhaps feelings of inauthenticity for a message creator, or envy in an audience member?
This line of research has several aims. First, it seeks to rethink what it means to optimize one’s online self-presentations and avoid contributing to toxic positivity. Second, it strives to learn more about how media content that is thematically non-hedonic (such as those related to transience, melancholy, nature, art, gratitude, or bouncing back from failures) can be perceived as meaningful.
When people attempt to learn something (e.g., a scientific topic, more about another person), their own thoughts and feelings about the learning process may influence their subjective judgments concerning the learning outcome. For instance, a cognitively fluent learning process may engender greater (undue) confidence in one’s knowledge than a disfluent learning process. Even though these subjective judgments may occasionally be inaccurate, people nevertheless use them to determine how much time and effort they should put into learning.
My research in this domain explores how the way people think/feel about their learning process can influence their perceptions of their own knowledge or of their own intellectual abilities.