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Why people believe others' social lives are richer than their own
- bluepirate 9y agoHave to pay to read :(
- Pica_soO 9y agoMoney = More richer intellectual life => More richer HN-Life
- coldtea 9y agoNot even close.
- Vinnl 9y agoIf you don't want to use a source of questionable legality like Sci-Hub [1] then you can try sending a request to the authors to make use of their right to share a copy through the Open Access Button [2] or Unpaywall [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub [2] https://openaccessbutton.org/request/zsLh3M7ozGvLwD67v https://openaccessbutton.org/request/zsLh3M7ozGvLwD67v [3] http://unpaywall.org/ http://unpaywall.org/
- make3 9y agoby definition, people with more active social lives are more visible than people without very active social lives
- mistaken 9y agoThis is what I've thought about too. Could the article's observations attributed to the friendship paradox? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox
- smallnamespace 9y agoPeople with impostor syndrome might find a lot of help in understanding the logic behind it, since it applies not just to friendship, but to any activity where visibility is positively correlated to ability. Most popular GitHub projects are by top coders. Most musicians are in a tiny fraction of the skill distribution. The people that one might respect and measures oneself by almost certainly are better than the average, so if one feels inferior to them, that is a statistical quirk and not a strong signal that one is below average.
- piaste 9y agoWhich is what the article says in the abstract: "We argue that this pessimistic bias stems from the fact that trendsetters and socialites come most easily to mind as a standard of comparison and show that reducing the availability of extremely social people eliminates this bias." There's also the well-known effect of social media where you see everybody's highlights and best moments, but unless you're close you won't hear about the boring or unhappy parts of their lives. I don't think the article tackles that though.
- ghughes 9y ago> We show that this bias holds across multiple populations (college students, MTurk respondents, shoppers at a local mall, and participants from a large, income-stratified online panel) MTurk workers are incentivized to answer quickly, not truthfully. Internet polls are bullshit.
- frereubu 9y agoI get really tired of this knee-jerk "X is bullshit" response without even bothering to see whether researchers are aware of potential issues. A simple search on Google Scholar would have shown that they are, and want to figure out what the methodological implications are. https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=mechanical+turk https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=mechanical+turk It's just as easy to argue - when you're not citing any evidence - that online respondents are more likely to be truthful because they're anonymous, and therefore their answer doesn't have an impact on their social reputation.
- matthewmacleod 9y agoKnee-jerk dismissals are more bullshit. It’s not a fucking Facebook poll, it’s a peer-reviewed multi-population study.
- coldtea 9y ago>MTurk workers are incentivized to answer quickly, not truthfully. Which doesn't prevent truthfulness if it doesn't take more time. Besides, they didn't say that they're super popular and cool -- so why'd they lie about not having a rich social life? >Internet polls are bullshit. Not really.
- mangix 9y agoIf a social life is not present, this is true.
- omarforgotpwd 9y ago“Well it may seem like others are going to more parties and having more sex than I am, but actually I read a study on hacker news that said I’m just imagining it!”
- Lxr 9y agoOn average, people actually do have fewer friends than their friends have (also works for sexual partners). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox
- jwilk 9y agoNon-mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox
- devit 9y agoIt's because when you read about other people you just read about the "highlights" of their life, and if you also read about many other people, it "feels" like amazing thing happen at the frequency you read about them (i.e. once every 1-5 minutes) rather than at the frequency they actually happen.
- qznc 9y agoThis. I don't believe my brain divides by the number of contacts. So I subconsciously compare my personal highlights with the highlights of all my friends combined. No wonder my life feels boring.
- bufferoverflow 9y agoA lot of it is just so fake. Pretty much everyone I know does the fake smile for the selfie, and then they immediately stop smiling. Many people I know, when traveling, have a check list of the selfies they want to make to show everyone else how great their life is, when I know it isn't. And they miss the actual fun of experiencing traveling - to them it's just a series of selfies. This was 99% of my Facebook, and that's why I quit. There was only one guy who was regularly posting interesting articles (tech, space, futurism). I ended up deciding a diamond in a pile of sh#t wasn't worth it, and HN/Reddit are better. As for the social aspect, most people's lives are boring, and most people are boring, they only look at what's happening today, worry about what other people think of them, and other boring drivel. /Rant over
- qrbLPHiKpiux 9y agoLet me add to your rant. Regarding my children, and school functions such as plays and recitals - the number of parents watching their kids through their smart phones recording video [1] instead of just watching it naturally and taking the moment in. [1] video that is horribly underexposed, un-viewable, that they'll never likely watch again.
- jwally 9y agoI went to my first Christmas recital this year (2 yr old) and remember thinking what a favor the school would have done everyone to film the performance themselves and sell the video. Instead everyone was rushing for better filming positions whenever a new group got on stage. Miserable.
- georgeecollins 9y agoIt seems like most schools in Los Angeles do this for plays and recitals. What is strange is that people still film stuff. I think it gives them something to do.
- snarf21 9y agoUggh, reminds me of people who take videos of fireworks and even worse post that garbage online.
- ringaroundthetx 9y agoPurchase pdf Anyone able to read the study?
- Vinnl 9y agoIf you don't want to use a source of questionable legality like Sci-Hub [1] then you can try sending a request to the authors to make use of their right to share a copy through the Open Access Button [2] or Unpaywall [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub [2] https://openaccessbutton.org/request/zsLh3M7ozGvLwD67v https://openaccessbutton.org/request/zsLh3M7ozGvLwD67v [3] http://unpaywall.org/ http://unpaywall.org/
- ringaroundthetx 9y agoIt has never on been the consumer to know who has a license to someone else’s copyrighted work So, no I dont have any qualms about sci-hub I have qualms about convenience, I rarely download torrents because Netflix has provided the convenience Ive enjoyed since 2002 Do what you need to do to help the monetization model of academics, not my problem
- mark_l_watson 9y agoValues that help make us happier are internal values, things that we have immediate control over (honesty, creativity, respect for ourself and others, etc.). External values, often comparing ourselves to others, don’t really make us happy.
- ljm 9y agoOn an anecdotal level, I've felt that a lot of this can manifest as mild envy, if not otherwise that pervasive fear of missing out. As an example, you're at home reading your favourite book and all your friends are out partying, yet even though you were happy with the decision to read, and to not join them if you had the offer, you still feel a bit envious of all of the others going out partying (and hearing about it too). I'm curious why it's so easy to see your own life as boring as compared to others, and while it's absolutely true that you only see their highlights (good and bad), you've got yourself 24/7, along with every single unfiltered thought and feeling that comes along with it. One activity of mine is to basically reflect on the recent past (say, the last 6 or 12 months, maybe even longer if I need to hammer the point home) and make a list of everything I did that was interesting, brave, adventurous, exciting, dangerous, difficult... no matter how insignificant some of it might seem. Once you have what is essentially an itemised list of your achievements in the last year or two, it's easy to put your own experiences into perspective, and you are no longer dismissing them because you're not lumping in all of those quiet moments where you needed downtime or binged something on Netflix, or whatever. And in a lot of cases it's far more interesting than what you'd be doing if all your weekends were parties and hangovers, and such like. And no one else needs to see that list you make, it's just bringing the attention back to yourself. It's incredibly powerful and a great reminder in those low moments.
- brenschluss 9y agoBecause: 1) people post positive news, but not negative ones; 2) you follow many people. Imagine you have 365 friends. Let’s say each friend has about 5 amazing days per year, but the rest 360 days are pretty dismal. If we assume that each friend will only post about amazing days, that means that your social media feed, on average, every single day of the year, will look like a non-stop barrage of 5 posts describing 1 amazing thing that happened to a friend.
- lafar6502 9y agoBecause nobody can have less than zero social life?
- DoreenMichele 9y agoI guess that depends on how you think of it. If all your social contacts are users, not actual friends, I think you can have a net negative social life where zero friends would be a step up.