Watch me on the local CBS news talking about the Facebook Smile research



Many thanks to Jim Hanchett for helping me to feel so relaxed during my interview. What a great, enthusiastic guy! We hung out for a bit afterward (off-camera) and talked about some of the "real-world" implications of the research.

**Here is a non-Flash link for Iphone users. Sadly, the quality is a bit lacking:

Watch the piece about our Facebook Smile research on ABC's World Tonight with Diane Sawyer: It was the "finale" of the program

Diane talked about the research repeatedly during the program...and they closed the broadcast with this nicely-executed piece. It's "light" (i.e., it does not really get into the complexity of our findings), but fun. Thanks to Diane--and to Cecilia Vega who produced and narrated the segment.

Watch it here:
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/smiling-proven-make-us-happier-14822785

[No non-flash option for Iphone users yet. Sorry!]

Listen to my live radio interview to talk about the Facebook smile research

I was extremely, extremely lucky that it was Angela Kokott at CHQR in Calgary, Canada who conducted this LIVE radio interview about our Facebook research. She was a total pro--and a lot of fun. I felt like I was talking to an old friend.

Here is a link to the (4-minute) interview. If only we had more time to talk about ALL of the results...

http://people.virginia.edu/~jps6z/Dr.PatrickSeder_DiscussesResultsOfFacebookSmileIntensityStudyOnRadioShow.mp3

Miller-McCune article about our Facebook results

Tom Jacobs at Miller-McCune did a great write-up of our Facebook results. [And I'm pretty sure he was the very first person to cover the story.] Thanks Tom! Some of the comments at the bottom are pretty amusing.

6 Years In the Making: Our Facebook "Smile" paper is now available.

Our Facebook paper (containing two longitudinal studies--we began this work waaay back in the fall of 2005 when I was in my second year of grad school...and Facebook had just arrived at most US colleges) is now in-press. Paper title: Intensity of Smiling in Facebook Photos Predicts Future Life Satisfaction. After a lot of deliberation, we (i.e., Shige Oishi and I) decided to publish it in Social Psychological and Personality Science because it's a great up-and-coming journal AND the format provided us with 5,000 words to tell our story (which we really needed).

Here is the Abstract:


Does the extent to which people are smiling in their Facebook photos predict future life satisfaction? In two longitudinal studies, the authors showed that smile intensity coded from a single Facebook profile photograph from male and female participants’ first semester at college was a robust predictor of self-reported life satisfaction 3.5 years later—as they were about to graduate from college. Controlling for first-semester life satisfaction, the authors also determined that smile intensity was a unique predictor of changes in life satisfaction over time. In addition, the authors demonstrated that the results were not due to extraversion or to sex differences in smile intensity. Finally, the authors showed that participants who exhibited a more intense smile in their Facebook photo had better social relationships during their first semester at college and that the association between smile intensity and life satisfaction 3.5 years later was partially mediated by first-semester social relationships satisfaction.

If you would like to read the full-text paper (at no cost), please see the instructions at the top left of this webpage.