Tobin Stephanie J, Crocker Jennifer, Jiang Tao
School of Psychology and Counselling, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA.
Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw. 2025 Apr;28(4):243-249. doi: 10.1089/cyber.2024.0480. Epub 2025 Mar 25.
This research examined the contagion of interpersonal goals through mock social media posts among Facebook users recruited from Prolific. Two pilot studies were conducted to create Facebook posts that reflected different combinations of self-image and compassionate goals. Then, in the main experiment, 775 participants were randomly assigned to view one of four posts in a 2 (self-image content) × 2 (compassionate content) between-subjects design. After viewing one of the posts, participants completed measures of prosocial and self-promoting posting intentions and inferred goals. Moderated mediation analyses revealed that perceivers inferred the relevant goals (especially in the absence of a competing goal), which in turn, predicted greater adoption of those goals. Specifically, perceivers inferred compassionate goals from compassionate content (even more so when self-image content was low), and inferring stronger compassionate goals predicted greater prosocial sharing intentions. Similarly, perceivers inferred self-image goals from self-image content (even more so when compassionate content was low), and inferring stronger self-image goals predicted greater self-promoting sharing intentions. This research suggests that interpersonal goal contagion can occur while using social media, revealing new pathways through which social media content can affect users.
本研究通过对从Prolific招募的Facebook用户的模拟社交媒体帖子，考察了人际目标的传播情况。进行了两项预实验，以创建反映自我形象和同情目标不同组合的Facebook帖子。然后，在主要实验中，775名参与者被随机分配，在一项2（自我形象内容）×2（同情内容）的组间设计中查看四个帖子之一。在查看其中一个帖子后，参与者完成了亲社会和自我推销发帖意图及推断目标的测量。调节中介分析表明，感知者推断出了相关目标（尤其是在没有竞争目标的情况下），这反过来又预测了对这些目标的更多采纳。具体而言，感知者从同情内容中推断出同情目标（当自我形象内容较少时更是如此），而推断出更强的同情目标则预测了更高的亲社会分享意图。同样，感知者从自我形象内容中推断出自我形象目标（当同情内容较少时更是如此），而推断出更强的自我形象目标则预测了更高的自我推销分享意图。这项研究表明，在使用社交媒体时可能会发生人际目标传播，揭示了社交媒体内容影响用户的新途径。
