The Face of Dating

Amy Muise and research team shine light on the impact of Facebook on relationships.

George Pereira
Photography Reporter

Privacy is becoming a precious commodity in our social media-driven world. As people continue to pour every aspect of their lives into their Facebook profile, they often don’t realize who they are sharing these experiences with.

The University of Guelph-Humber held a lecture on February 13th, focusing on the impact Facebook is having on relationships. Amy Muise PhD, a professor in the University’s psychology program, hosted the event.

The presentation showcased all of the research gathered by Muise and her research team. Students were asked to complete a daily survey for two weeks and the results revealed some interesting statistics.

Sarah Lintern, a third-year Psychology Student, talked about what it was like to participate in the research.

“Me and my boyfriend were both doing the survey,” said Lintern. “But we never knew each other’s answers.”

The anonymity was a key component of the research and likely the only reason students were willing to be honest with their answers.

Fortunately for Muise, the truth proved to be quite shocking. In one of the studies, students were asked to browse a fake person’s profile with the idea that this person was their partner.

“You visit his page, and you’re exposed to a photo where he’s out celebrating someone’s birthday,” explains Muise.

The photo shows the man dancing with a woman and females were asked to measure how jealous they felt when seeing the photo under three different circumstances: If the woman was his cousin, a known friend, or an unknown person. An identical scenario was created for males with a female profile.

“For women, the more jealous they felt, the more time they spent ‘creeping’ [the unknown person’s profile], whereas for men, it’s almost the inverse relationship,” said Muise, of her findings. An on-screen graphic showed that men spent the most time exploring the person’s profile if she was presented as the cousin.

Muise says the best way to deal with jealousy created by Facebook is to talk about it directly and frankly, and warns against getting angry.

“It’s probably best to just discuss those things instead of worrying about it and searching on Facebook. It can be easy to just see something and instantly get jealous.”

Just one of the many revelations littered throughout Muise’s lecture, this first offering from Guelph-Humber bodes well for the two upcoming lectures.

All information on upcoming lectures is posted on the front page of www.onlineguelphhumber.ca.