PsychBook Research

Collecting and analysing psychological research on the most popular social networking site in the world today.

Author Archive

At this rate, the internet will soon become self-aware, and answer to the name of ‘Facebook’

Websites are signing up to the Open Graph API and other social plugins at a phenomenal rate. In the future, you won’t go on the internet to log in to Facebook, you’ll log on to Facebook to go on the internet – how’s about that for a soundbite? Facebook’s New Social Plugins Come to 50,000+ […]

29 April 2010 at 20:18 - Comments

‘My Mom Tried To Friend Me On Facebook But I Ignored Her’

It’s a quote! from this study, which has been doing the rounds over the last few days, carried out at the University of Maryland, College Park, by the International Center for Media & the Public Agenda, who asked 200 students to abstain from using all media for 24 hours. And then they were asked to […]

28 April 2010 at 23:17 - Comments

Will this privacy debate actually go anywhere? I doubt it

Senators tell Facebook: tighten privacy policy (from the Washington Post). This seems to happen every time Facebook make changes, and although this time it is a bit more insidious – if you sign up for a new profile today, your privacy settings are automatically set to public, unlike previously – I still can’t see this […]

28 April 2010 at 15:16 - Comments

Irrelevant Wednesday: how’s about we reinforce old stereotypes in new media?

You’ll probably come across this one splashed all over the internet soon – apparently men and women are using Facebook differently. Which means we’re from different planets, of course. I mean, someone on ‘ForbesWoman’ said that ‘Experts believe the difference between how men and women operate online mirror their motivations offline’, so that must be […]

28 April 2010 at 12:00 - Comments

For all the Farmville folk – a very interesting piece about how it works your psychology

This is a rather long-winded, but at the same time, stellar, insight into how Farmville ‘work’s. What the article shows, eventually, is that there are certain fundamental psychological ‘tricks’ built into the architecture of the game, that make it extremely habit-forming, not to mention socially viral. Well worth a read. Thanks to Business Insider The […]

28 April 2010 at 09:09 - Comments