I started off by making two new Facebook profiles. For the two profiles, I used two pictures of people who are the same age. The pictures were of people not known by anyone at NCSA, so that they would not be recognized. They both had completely random names and were from North Carolina, however one iss considered conventionally attractive, and the other's face is covered in acne. I requested the same people to be friends at the same time, and checked the results one day later.
After one day, Jake, the so-called "hottie" had 5 friends. He even had one request of friendship directed to him: Evan Furth!
Walter, the not-so-attractive test subject had only four accepted requests, and no requests offered to him.
What does this say about the way we all choose our friends? Are we really as shallow as to only allow an attractive stranger to be our friend on Facebook? Why are we even in contact with people we don't know at all on the internet?
That is a really interesting experiment! I'm actually surprised that even four people accepted the other guy. That says a lot about our society and how shallow we are! I wonder why it is that naturally we tend to trust people that are more attractive...
ReplyDelete~Brodie
I was actually surprised by the results of this! I thought people would be prejudiced and not accept the wierd-looking guy. Of course, people shoudn't be accepting anyone they don't know, but it was interesting that they both got the same number of friends.
ReplyDeleteDanielle Green
This makes a really interesting comment on our society's beauty-based prejudices. We choose the attractive over the unattractive, apparently we make an effort to befriend the attractive, and according to this lab, we trust the attractive.
ReplyDeleteSofie Schreiber
I was surprised at these results. I figured more people would add Jake and not Walter but I guess it didn't really matter. Not too many people excepted either of them which makes sense.
ReplyDelete-Shea
I was surprised that Walter got as many as he did. It's sad how we chose our friends based on looks.
ReplyDeleteIt's also interesting that people add people they don't know or request people they don't know based on looks.
-Noah