Positive Effect of Selfies: Analytical Essay

Abstract

In this article, “Promoting Positive Affect Through Smartphone Photography”, Studies show that students attending college are more likely stress than others because of many reasons but that stress can lead to many chronic health problems. A study was proposed on 41 college students for a period of four weeks to see if the selfies will truly impact their moods. They were put into three conditions which where Selfie who would just take a smiling selfie, Personal who would take pictures that made them happy and Other conditions who would take pictures that would make others happy and then send it to them and they did it on two apps that had five main tasks every day. After collecting all of the data, for the Selfie condition photos made them happy and smiling helped their mood over the weeks and even if some was fake, for the Personal condition fake and forced smiles brought stress and taking a picture in the environment became boring to do every day and Other condition made their connection with the people they sent it to, better.

In this article, “Taking selfies may be good for you, study finds”, it talks about a lady that takes many selfies a day, in not even two whole days, she took 60 selfies already. She expresses on how it helps the inner you and you can gain positivity within yourself and happiness. Keyler was not the only one doing this, selfies were being taken around the world and starting to help some people, celebrity or not. A study from the University of California proves that by taking more selfies, there was a higher chance of being happier than ever. In this article, it talked about the reflection of the study from the first article that was read. Also, taking too many photos of yourself could be too much because we should be reflecting out instead of in. The key of it all is having self-control, no matter how you take your selfies.

Positive Effect of Smiling in Selfies

When comparing article “Promoting Positive Affect through Smartphone Photography” and article “Taking selfies may be good for you, study finds” you will find that they share the same topic of how selfie have a big effect on people around the world, from studies and just things people decided to do and try out and actually got to see a difference in their mood and emotions from the impact of just taking many selfies every single day and noticing how different they eventually started to feel. These articles are also similar because the first article talked about the study that occurred to find out if selfies in generally can factually increase happiness and it was discussed that, “The results suggest that any photo-taking with the intent to increase one’s happiness can increase positive affect,” (Chen et al., 2016) and the second article talked about Irvine saying how taking more and more smiling selfies will increase the likely chance of happiness going forward in life and they said, “A new selfie study the University of California, Irvine, says taking more smiling selfies increases your chances of happiness.” (Villarreal, 2016). So in both articles they both, in ways, are convincing the audience that taking the selfies have proven you will feel that difference and change within yourself and eventually be happy in your life by just picking up a phone and snapping a smiling picture.

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The media report clearly and accurately described the research spot on which was the first article by rephrasing and explaining the whole article in just one short paragraph, they hit all the main points of 16 pages of “Promoting Positive Affect through Smartphone Photography” article by restating the main and important little points of the results from the study that was taking place at a University with 41 students involved for four weeks straight. There were a few distortions in generalizing the results because not everybody took the experiment in a positive way, for example in the research some people in the Selfie condition said the four week experiment end up bringing them stress because sometimes the smiles was faked and forced and it was overwhelming for them which caused negative feedback to take the smiling selfie they needed to take every day and it would be difficult to take a smiling picture in a private area because to do it in public place like in the classroom or when they are out, was awkward for them and to take it in the same place all the time became too boring because they got tired of doing it in the same area and it felt like they was just being repeative which also got irritating. For the Personal condition there was not really a lot of distortions but for Other condition the distortions of the results were taking smiling pictures in private because taking them in public would make them feel embarrassed. The popular press article did and did not accurately portray the topic because it talked about how taking selfies are good for and showed and explained about what the study had found but it did not explain enough and it did not go into depth about it so you have to go off of the little information it gives you and it is not enough to fully understand the meaning of how good selfies really can be by basing it off of one lady that took so many pictures in less than two days because everybody is different and so many selfies may be too much for different people. So the popular press article did portray the topic but it did not give the audience enough information from the study, only just a little quick paragraph over the actually study that occurred from a different article. They failed to mention stats and charts on the study that was found and in the topic it says “selfies may be good...” but in the article they did not specifically say what may be good or may not be good, they just talk more about the woman that came to Los Angeles and took too many selfies and how professors giving off their opinion of it giving or making people feel happier within and increasing chances of being happy.

The media report was summarized objectively with bias because they only mentioned the good results to make their article look more presentable and not the raw, straight forward truth because they did not mention the not so good results because 100% of students will most likely not agree. What may help one group of people may not always help all groups of people and media report summarized paragraph did not express that, they just shared the good news that came out of the experience. They were bias to one part of the study because there was more explained and presented and there was also three different conditions that they of course did not add to their summarization and all three different conditions did not feel or get the same experience because they all did three different tasks that was asked of them for example it was Selfie, Personal and Other conditions and Selfie condition did talk about how fake smiling did help even though it was fake but it also was hard for many others that again, the media report did not also add to.

In Conclusion, the comparison of the media report to the original research article is almost just alike, the media could have done a better job of rephrasing the original research but it covers the basics of what the original research article is trying to present to the audience, just in a quick well said paragraph. There were many distortions in generalizing the results but the greater amount of results, is the results that they were looking for and verified a lot of things for them in doing this study with 41 college students. Even though the media report was coming off as bias to what they wanted to put on their article, they still gave the audience some good information that we all wanted to really know about the experiment that was tested out on truly knowing that selfies does have its own advantages for being more confident, happy and eventually having more self-control. The journal article does support the increasing of happiness when they did try the smartphone photography.

References

1. Ali, S., Chen, Y., & Mark, G. (2016). Promoting Positive Affect through Smartphone Photography. Psychology of Well-Being, 6:8, 1-16.