Samantha Walsh January 27, 2014
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3 Research Studies for 45 Minutes

Muise, A., Christofides, E., & Desmarais, S. (2009). More information than you ever wanted: Does Facebook bring out the green-eyed monster of jealousy? Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 12, 441-444. Doi:10.1089/cpb.2008.0263, ( Academic Search Complete database)

The main idea of this study is to evaluate the role that Facebook plays in jealousy in one’s life, and to see if heightened facebook use creates more jealousy than one would normally experience personally and in your relationships (Muise, A., Christofides, E., & Desmarais, S., 2009). It also assesses the effect that social media (especially facebook) has on romantic relationships. Some key terms that I found were necessary to understand this study include the following. First off, social network is an online collection of people who participate in one channel to communicate and share information about their lives. Another term I found important was the concept of “friends”. On Facebook this means the amount of people you have accepted to view your profile, and comment/like things you post. When I say “like” I am talking about the ability one has on Facebook to publicly show that you approve of a photo/status/comment. One can see these specifically for a person on their “wall” which is the main page of their profile where all of their activity appears.
Now for the hypothesis, it was “predicted that time spent on Facebook would uniquely contribute to Facebook-specific jealousy beyond the effects of the person and relational factors described in the jealousy literature” (Muise, A., Christofides, E., & Desmarais, S., 2009, p. 442). Next for the methods, 308 undergraduate students took n questionnaire online. 231 of the participants were female and 77 were male. They also made sure to include that 50% of the participants were in a serious relationship with just one significant other. The online questionnaire consisted of 27 questions that were all answered separately on a 7 point Likert scale, and kept the participants anonymous. To make this survey the researchers “compiled a list of items to reflect aspects of Facebook that have potential to contribute to sexual and romantic jealousy” (Muise, A., Christofides, E., & Desmarais, S., 2009, p. 442). So basically, they asked users questions such as “ How likely are you to become jealous after your partner has added an unknown member of the opposite sex” (Muise, A., Christofides, E., & Desmarais, S., 2009, p. 442)? The result of this study consisted of participants saying they spent 38.93 minutes per day on Facebook, had between 25-1000 Facebook friends, 74.6% of users were somewhat likely to have previous romantic partners as friends, 78.9% of users said their partner was friends with a previous romantic partner, and 92.1% of users had friends they did not actually know. The hypothesis was proven to be correct, and it was “ found that the trait jealousy was a significant predictor of Facebook jealousy, which, along with gender, account for 46% variance” (Muise, A., Christofides, E., & Desmarais, S., 2009, p. 443).
To discuss this study, the data does not provide enough information on the feedback loop of Facebook though it discusses it. The feedback loop is this idea that typical Facebook user discloses a lot of information about their lives on Facebook and because of this over exposure this is what may cause their partners jealousies and confusion. For future research one should “directly examine the effects of various triggers on the experience of jealousy on the time individuals spend on Facebook, and directly assess the process by which time spent on Facebook and the experience of jealousy on Facebook are related” (Muise, A., Christofides, E., & Desmarais, S., 2009, p. 444). This will better assess the feedback loop and make more concrete evidence for romantic jealousy. In conclusion, Facebook definitely does increase