Non Lonely Target People

The purpose of this study was to investigate how loneliness of the target person and their academic performance affect others to perceiver their level of achievement. Eighteen undergraduate students at UCLA including three male and 15 female participated in this study, and their age rang was from 18 to 23 years old. A two way within-subjects design was used to investigate the loneliness level of the target person, defined as lonely or non-lonely, and their GPA level, defined as a 3.5 GPA or a 2.5 GPA, on participants’ perceived level of achievement. The result showed that perceivers rated the non-lonely target person higher level of achievement than the lonely target person. They also rated the target person who had a 3.5 GPA higher achievement …show more content…
When the target person had a high GPA, perceivers would rate the non-lonely target person higher level of achievement than the lonely target person, but when the target person had a low GPA, perceivers would rate both lonely and non-lonely target person similarly on the level of achievement.
Based on the results, we found that people rated the non-lonely target person higher achievement ratings than the lonely target person. This was consistent with the hypothesis derived from Jones et al.’s finding. The perceivers perceived traits or behaviors in the lonely target person’s profile less favorable than the ones in the non-lonely target person’s profile, so non-lonely people were predicted to be more successful than the lonely people. It seems to be a norm in college to consider people display behaviors or emotions such as not attending parties or feeling isolated as lonely people, and people who participate in school and extracurricular activities or open to others are considered non-lonely people. Moreover, we see a stigmatization effect of loneliness here might due to the fact that people in general don’t appreciate lonely people. Others might hesitate to associate with lonely people. Because other people are …show more content…
First of all, the operational definition of the dependent variable was not well defined. It is too broad to be measured with a six-item scales. Also, there might be some other variables which were not be detected to influence the participants’ perception. Third, some parts of the materials were very similar. For example, some descriptions of the profiles shared same characteristics, so it might have caused the participants confusion which eventually affected the ratings. Fourth, since majority of the participants were female, gender might have an effect on how they perceived the target