Method
Participants
Participants in this study were 38 undergraduate students from the sections of PSYC 270 class in Fall 2016. There were 35 females and 3 males. 26 participants were identified as White or Caucasian, 7 Asian/ Pacific Islander, 4 as Black or African American and 1 as Hispanic or Latino.
Measures
This study was intended to be an experimental design. Therefore, there were two independent variables (factors) and one dependent variable for the two social media posts. Consequently, one 2x2 between subjects analysis of variance was run for the positive social media’s posts and for the negative social media posts …show more content…
The first hypothesis that there would be a main effect of openness on emotional state, was not supported. There was not a significant difference in the average of low openness compare to high openness. The likelihood of emotional state changes was similar for low levels of openness and for high openness levels. The hypothesis that a main effect of social media on emotional state would be observed, was not supported by the results of this study. There was not a significant difference between the social media posts and the emotional states, both positive and negative social media posts showed similar levels of emotional states. The hypothesis that there would be an interaction between emotional state and openness was not supported. There was not significant interaction between emotional state and openness.
The results of this study have demonstrated that social media and levels of openness do not have a big impact on emotional state. Moreover, it showed no differences between low or high emotional state changes when looking at the positive social media posts. Therefore, people who scored low and high on openness will experience similar emotional state changes when looking at positive or negative social