Students' Willingness to Work with Peers based on Political View in Facebook

Abstract

According to Mussen (1977), a change in political views is possible when examining adolescents through the process of their education. Seventy-eight undergraduate students interacting with a fictitious Facebook profile with three levels of political postings (liberal, moderate, conservative) participated in this study. The students included both freshmen and seniors to examine the difference in “willingness to work,” with a person in a fictitious profile that contained politically based postings. The profile contained three levels; a strongly conservative profile, a strongly liberal profile, as well as a neutral profile. This study’s primary focus investigated the political views of freshmen students and senior students regarding their willingness to work with a stranger using the format of a Facebook page. I hypothesized participants’ willingness to work with peers would be different based on their classification (freshmen, seniors). I found no significant differences regarding the reactions to the profiles (by rating regarding their willingness to work with each profile) based on the condition (liberal, moderate, conservative) or participants’ political affiliation. I ran further analyses looking into frequency of Facebook use as well as daily use of social media. Much like the dependent variable of “Willingness to work,” with the fictitious profile, both groups (freshmen, seniors) reported similar results.