Computers in Human Behavior 78 (2018) 26e33

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Computers in Human Behavior

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Full Length Article

Are you happy for me … on Facebook? The potential importance of

“likes” and comments*
Anne L. Zell*, Lisa Moeller
Department of Psychology, Augustana University, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Sharing positive personal newsdknown as capitalizationdwith an enthusiastic listener in personal in-
Received 8 May 2017 teractions has been associated with positive outcomes (Gable & Reis, 2010). We sought to extend this
Received in revised form capitalization model to an online context involving masspersonal communication (O'Sullivan & Carr,
19 July 2017
2017). We surveyed participants (n ¼ 311) about their Facebook status updates from the previous two
Accepted 30 August 2017
Available online 17 September 2017
weeks. As hypothesized, participants perceived as more positive and important and recalled better their
status updates that had received more responses. Receiving more likes and comments on one's status
updates was also associated with reporting greater happiness and self-esteem, greater satisfaction with
Keywords:
Perceived Responses to Capitalization
the responses one's status updates received, and perceiving one's Facebook community to be more
Attempts (PRCA) scale interested in one's good news. The present findings point to the potential importance of the likes and
Facebook comments people receive on their Facebook status updates.
Paralinguistic digital affordances © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Social support
Subjective well-being
Social networking (SNS)

1. Introduction intimacy (Otto et al., 2015).

Capitalization refers to the “social sharing of positive events”
(Gable & Reis, 2010, p. 198). According to Gable and Reis's (2010)
model of capitalization processes, sharing news of the positive
events in one's life increases subjective well-being (e.g., Lambert
et al., 2013) and fosters relational intimacy (MacGregor,
Fitzsimons, & Holmes, 2013; Otto, Laurenceau, Siegel, & Belcher,
2015). The model additionally states that the benefits of sharing
one's positive news with others stem at least partly from the au-
dience's response, specifically how constructive vs. destructive and
active vs. passive it is (Gable, Reis, Impett, & Asher, 2004). As Gable
and Reis (2010, p. 213) put it, “capitalization attempts create an
opportunity for the partner to demonstrate responsiveness to the
self”. Consistent with this model, research has found that sharing
positive events with an enthusiastic audience compared to with a
disinterested or negative audience produced a greater increase in
positive mood (Gable et al., 2004; Lambert et al., 2013) and
* receive to their Facebook status updates in general. We propose
This research was supported by grants from Augustana University's Civitas
program and Augustana Research and Artist Fund.
* Corresponding author. Department of Psychology, Augustana University, 2001
S. Summit Ave, Sioux Falls, SD, 57197, USA.
E-mail address: anne.zell@augie.edu (A.L. Zell).
Initially, research on capitalization focused on face-to-face in-
teractions. However, interacting with others online using social
networking sites is widespread, and the quality of these online
relationships seems potentially important, as feeling supported by
one's Facebook community has been associated with greater sub-
jective well-being (Grieve, Indian, Witteveen, Tolan, & Marrington,
2013; Lee, Noh, & Koo, 2013). People post status updates containing
positive news often in hopes of receiving validation from others as a
way of seeking support on Facebook (Blight, Jagiello, & Ruppel,
2015). Status updates posted on one's Facebook wall are mass-
personal communications (O'Sullivan & Carr, 2017), as they are made
available for any and all in one's social network to see rather than
being transmitted directly and privately to a specific individual.
Would masspersonal capitalization attempts on Facebook yield the
same positive effects as personal capitalization attempts have been
found to produce? Choi and Toma's (2014) finding that sharing
positive events on Facebook was associated with experiencing
greater positive affect implies that they might. Going a step further,
the present study focuses on the effect of the responses people
that receiving more (vs. fewer) “likes” and comments on one's
Facebook status updates is associated with positive outcomes,
detailed below in section 1.1 and subsections. To our knowledge,

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.08.050
0747-5632/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 A.L. Zell, L. Moeller / Computers in Human Behavior 78 (2018) 26e33
this is the first study to apply capitalization theory (Gable & Reis,
2010; Gable et al., 2004) to an online context such as Facebook.
1.1. Possible benefits of receiving responses (i.e., likes and
comments) to Facebook status updates
How might sharing news with an enthusiastic audience on
Facebook lead to positive outcomes? Gable and Reis's (2010) model,
drawing upon Langston's (1994) hypotheses, proposes that capi-
talizing increases subjective well-being in part because it makes the
personal event seem more significant and increases its memora-
bility and because it gives the audience an opportunity to exhibit
care and supportiveness. Applying this model to Facebook requires
that we first consider differences between offline and online con-
texts: Whereas Gable and Reis's (2010) model assumed that the
capitalization attempt would be directed toward an individual, in
the case of Facebook status updates the target of communication is
a group. Thus, the present investigation looks at the perceived
responsiveness of a group, not of an individual. Furthermore, re-
sponses to status updates posted on Facebook will be affected by
Facebook's affordances: people who wished to respond to a status
update could post comments or employ a one-click communication
in the form of the thumbs-up “like” button. Facebook displays the
total number of comments and the total number of likes that each
status update has received. With those differences in mind, we
generated specific hypotheses about how the capitalization pro-
cesses observed in personal interactions play out on Facebook
walls.
1.1.1. Perceptions of one's own news
The capitalization model states that telling a supportive person
about a positive personal event causes one to value that event more
highly and perceive it as more significant (Gable & Reis, 2010;
Langston, 1994). Consistent with the model, Reis et al. (2010)
found that sharing news of a positive event with an enthusiasti-
cally responsive (vs. passive) person face-to-face caused people to
view their personal event even more positively, perhaps because
the audience's excitement confirmed the event's significance.
Generalizing this to an online context, we speculated that partici-
pants would value their Facebook status update more highly the
more responses that particular update had received. Thus, we hy-
pothesized that receiving more responses to a status update would
be associated with perceiving the update as more positive and
more important.
1.1.2. Recall of one's own news
The capitalization model also states that, because capitalization
conversations typically entail rehearsing and vividly describing the
event, they increase the memorability of that shared event. The
increased memorability, in turn, helps to explain capitalization's
positive effect on subjective well-being: Positive events may have a
greater impact if they are remembered than if they are forgotten.
Supporting this line of the capitalization processes model, Gable
et al. (2004) found that people were more likely to remember a
positive personal event later the more people they had told about it,
even while accounting for the rated importance of the event.
We reasoned that this enhanced memory for more frequently
shared positive events could also occur on Facebook where
receiving more responses on a status update might be partially
analogous to telling more people face-to-face. The feature on
Facebook that gives “notifications” each time someone responds to
one's status updates may additionally prompt people to look at or
think about their posts again. Therefore we hypothesized that
participants will be more likely to remember their own status up-
date the more responses it had received. Following the practice in
27
prior capitalization research, we planned to control for the rated
importance of the update in order to minimize the influence of this
confound.
1.1.3. Subjective well-being
Subjective well-being, although multifaceted, refers broadly to
how positively people evaluate and feel about their lives (e.g.,
Diener et al., 2017). As predicted by the capitalization processes
model, capitalization has been found to be associated with higher
subjective well-being (measured by positive affect and life satis-
faction), particularly when the target responded an in active-
constructive way (Gable et al., 2004; Lambert et al., 2013). We hy-
pothesized that on Facebook as well, people will experience higher
subjective well-being when the target of their communication
(which in this case would be their group of Facebook friends) is
responsive.
In the present study, we were also interested in a construct
closely tied to subjective well-being: self-esteem. As predicted by
sociometer theory, perceiving oneself to be popular leads to higher
self-esteem (Leary & Baumeister, 2000; Reitz, Motti-Stefanidi, &
Asendorpf, 2016). On Facebook, information about one's popularity
is available via the open display of the number of respondents on
status updates. In prior research, perceiving that many people are
reading one's status updates (Manago, Taylor, & Greenfield, 2012)
and the number of responses received to one's last three status
updates (marginally; Greitemeyer, Mugge, & Bollermann, 2014)
have been linked with higher self-esteem. Being assigned to receive
no response to one's status updates (Tobin, Vanman, Verreynne, &
Saeri, 2014) or to view the profile of someone else who had received
a great deal of response (Vogel, Rose, Roberts, & Eckles, 2014) have
been found to lower self-esteem. On this basis, we predicted that
receiving more responses to one's status updates on Facebook will
be associated with greater subjective well-being, operationalized as
self-reported happiness and self-esteem.
1.1.4. Perceptions of one's Facebook community
Supporting the capitalization processes model (Gable & Reis,
2010), enthusiastic responses to face-to-face capitalization at-
tempts have been found to increase intimacy (Otto et al., 2015). Do
similar processes operate on Facebook? The small amount of
existing research examining whether receiving responses to status
updates is linked to positive interpersonal outcomes has thus far
yielded inconsistent results: On one hand, Utz (2015) found that the
likes and comments people received on their Facebook status up-
dates did not predict feeling connected to those reading their status
updates. große Deters and Mehl (2012) found that, although being
assigned to post more on Facebook reduced loneliness, this
reduction in loneliness was not attributable to the proportion of
status updates that had received a response. On the other hand,
Burke and Kraut (2014) found that receiving comments, messages,
and wall posts from someone predicted increases in feelings of
closeness to that person. Furthermore, Stavrositu and Sundar
(2012) found that receiving more (vs. fewer) comments led blog-
gers to report a stronger sense of community. Our hypothesis was
that likes and commentsdthe more the better!dreceived on one's
status updates convey the message that other people are interested
and are happy that one has positive news. Therefore, we wanted to
examine those perceptions specifically.
The Perceived Responses to Capitalization Attempts (PRCA)
scale was developed by Gable et al. (2004) to measure perceptions
that one's close friend or romantic partner typically responds with
excitement rather than passivity, disinterest, or negativity to one's
news about positive personal events. It assesses perceptions of
responses that vary along two dimensions: active/passive and
constructive/destructive. Active-Constructive responses show high
28 A.L. Zell, L. Moeller / Computers in Human Behavior 78 (2018) 26e33
levels of interest and excitement. Passive-Constructive responses
are also positive but lack enthusiasm. Passive-Destructive re-
sponses convey lack of attention, interest, or caring. Active-
Destructive responses criticize or undercut the good news. Gable
et al. (2004) subtracted the mean of the Passive-Constructive,
Passive-Destructive, and Active-Destructive subscale scores from
the Active-Constructive subscale score, and they found this
resulting composite PRCA score to be associated with relationship
satisfaction, trust, and intimacy.
Further validating the PRCA, Gable et al. (2006) report that
participants who responded to their partner's good news in a
highly active and constructive way, as rated by coders viewing
videotapes of the interaction, were also rated more highly on the
PRCA by their partners. Thus, they found that objectively observed
behaviors such as “elaboration of positives, linking to other positive
events, smiling, laughing” (p. 908), gestures, and speech in face-to-
face interactions correlated with ratings on the PRCA.
We wanted to use the PRCA in a novel way, to measure the
perceived responsiveness of participants' Facebook communi-
tiesdhence, measuring the perceived responsiveness of a group of
people rather than an individual, and online rather than face-to-
face. We hypothesized that objectively observable behaviorsdin
this case, likes and comments on status updatesdwould be posi-
tively associated with perceptions that one's Facebook community
is typically interested in and excited about one's good news, as
measured by a modified version of the PRCA. In turn, we expected
perceptions that one's Facebook community is interested in and
excited about one's good news to be associated with greater sub-
jective well-being, consistent with prior research on the PRCA
(Demir & Davidson, 2013; Gable et al., 2004).
1.1.5. Response types
Which are more important, comments or likes? In face-to-face
interactions, positive responses to capitalization attempts have
been found to be more beneficial if they are active than if they are
passive (e.g., Reis et al., 2010). On Facebook, writing comments
takes more activity and effort than “clicking like” does. So if Face-
book interactions are similar to face-to-face interactions, we might
expect comments, not likes, to correlate with positive outcomes.
Comments (compared to likes) might also prompt more elabora-
tion, which Gable et al. (2004) theorized is partly responsible for
capitalization's positive effects. Consistent with this line of
thinking, Burke and Kraut (2014, 2016) found that only “composed”
communications (defined as wall posts, messages, and comments),
not “one-click” communications (defined as likes and pokes), pre-
dicted positive outcomes.
On the other hand, Facebook interactions differ from face-to-
face interactions in potentially significant ways. When sharing
good news with someone face-to-face, one can usually tell if that
person has received the message, and if so, a response is socially
expected. By contrast, when sharing one's good news on Facebook,
lack of response from a particular individual could stem from that
person having not seen the post, or having disapproved of the post,
or having approved of the post but preferring to “lurk” rather than
be active on Facebook. Because people can more easily “get away
with” not responding on Facebook than they can face-to-face, any
response at all on Facebook represents more of a choice and
therefore carries more meaning. By this reasoning, we would
expect likes, despite requiring minimal effort, to be associated with
positive outcomes. Furthermore, the number of responses (which
typically are predominantly likes) a person is able to garner on their
post may be perceived as being an indicator of their popularity or of
the amount of social support offered by their community. Thus, we
planned to explore whether comments will be more strongly
related than likes to the positive outcomes under investigation and
to satisfaction with the response received.
2. Method
2.1. Participants
After obtaining IRB approval, we administered a survey online
using SurveyMonkey. We emailed the survey link to students,
faculty, and staff at a small college in the Midwestern U.S., and
posted it on Facebook and on websites listing online psychology
studies. Participants were offered the opportunity to enter a raffle
for a $50 gift card. The survey was begun by 373 and completed by
311 participants, 77.4% female, 63.5% affiliated with our campus
community, M_age ¼ 26.46, SD ¼ 11.45.
2.2. Procedure and measures
After participants gave informed consent, the opening in-
structions said, “The first set of questions will be based on memory.
**
Please do NOT look at your Facebook account at this time.**.”
Participants then reported gender, age, and whether they had any
affiliation with the authors’ college. They also completed the NPI-13
(Gentile et al., 2013), but it will not be discussed further because it
is not relevant to the present hypotheses and because controlling
for it does not affect any of the results presented here (see Zell &
Moeller, 2017; for additional findings based on this dataset).
On the next page, participants read “IMPORTANT: You must NOT
be on Facebook at this time.” Then they were instructed to list all of
the status updates they could remember posting on their own
Facebook page in the last two weeks and briefly described the
subject of each post. The instructions right before they began
typing their response repeated, “Please rely on your memory. Do
not check Facebook.”
On the next page, participants were instructed to log in to their
Facebook account before advancing to the next page. On the
following page, participants reported their number of Facebook
friends, M ¼ 611.24, SD ¼ 424.38, median ¼ 549, range ¼ 12e2711.
Then participants were asked to look at their Facebook page and list
all their own status updates from present to two weeks ago.
Twenty-seven percent of participants reported having posted no
status updates within the prior two weeks. We set the maximum
number of status updates that could be reported arbitrarily at 24; a
maximum was needed because participants had to scroll past all
the blank fields in order to advance to the next page. The mean
number of status updates participants reported having posted in
the last two weeks was 3.41, SD ¼ 4.84, median ¼ 7. A total of 1035
Facebook status updates during the prior two weeks were reported
(also reported but excluded from analyses were an additional 211
status updates that were posted longer than two weeks ago and 64
reports of Facebook activities other than posting status updates on
one's Facebook wall).
For each status update, participants reported the same infor-
mation. First, they briefly described the post. Later, two coders
independently rated each post as having been completely forgotten
(0), slightly recalled (1) or fully recalled (2) by comparing it to the
list of posts the participant had reported from memory; M ¼ 0.96,
SD ¼ 0.94. Agreement between the coders was adequate
(kappa ¼ 0.77), and discrepancies were resolved by the first author
in consultation with a third rater.
Next, participants responded to “How positive do you consider
the subject of this post?” with a number from 1 (very negative) to 10
(very positive), M ¼ 8.52, SD ¼ 2.15. They responded to “How
important do you consider the subject of this post?” with a number
from 1 (not at all important) to 10 (very important), M ¼ 6.24,
SD ¼ 3.05. They reported the date of the post. We compared the
 A.L. Zell, L. Moeller / Computers in Human Behavior 78 (2018) 26e33
reported date of each status update to the date the survey was
submitted to calculate how many days earlier the status update was
posted.
For each reported status update, participants reported how
many likes it received (M ¼ 12.87, SD ¼ 20.11, median ¼ 5,
range ¼ 0e175), how many comments it received that they
considered to be positive (M ¼ 2.12, SD ¼ 5.55, median ¼ 0,
range ¼ 0e67), how many comments it received that they
considered to be neutral or negative (M ¼ 0.23, SD ¼ 1.12,
median ¼ 0, range ¼ 0e18), and how many comments they made
on their own status update (M ¼ 0.59, SD ¼ 2.17, median ¼ 0,
range ¼ 0e32). Only 10% of' status updates were reported not to
have received at least one like or comment. Finally, participants
rated how satisfied they were with the response they received on
that post with a number from 1 (very unsatisfied) to 10 (very
satisfied), M ¼ 7.26, SD ¼ 2.51.
Several questions pertaining to a different set of hypotheses
followed (for details, see Zell & Moeller, 2017). Then, to measure
subjective well-being with a focus on self-esteem and happiness,
we asked participants to rate how much they agree right now with
items from the Rosenberg (1965) trait self-esteem scale (“On the
whole, I am satisfied with myself”, “I feel that I am a person of
worth, at least on an equal plane with others”, “I have high self-
esteem”, and “At times I think that I am no good at all” [reverse
scored]) and modified from Lyubomirsky and Lepper's (1999)
Subjective Happiness Scale (“In general, I consider myself a very
happy person”, “I am generally not very happy” [reverse scored],
and “I enjoy life regardless what is going on, getting the most out of
everything”), a ¼ 0.90, M ¼ 5.42, SD ¼ 1.19. Our decision to put only
these seven subjective well-being items on the survey was moti-
vated by concerns about demanding too much time and effort from
participants.
Participants completed the Perceived Responses to Capitaliza-
tion Attempts scale (Gable et al., 2004), with the simplified in-
struction, “Please rate how accurately each of the statements below
describe your Facebook experience” and the stem modified to refer
to Facebook (“When I post on Facebook about something good that
has happened to me …”). The scale contains four subscales, scored
by averaging agreement with the items: Passive-Constructive (e.g.,
“My Facebook friends say little, but I know they are happy for me”),
a ¼ 0.68, M ¼ 3.90, SD ¼ 1.18; Active-Constructive (e.g., “My Face-
book friends usually react to my good fortune enthusiastically”),
a ¼ 0.51, M ¼ 4.11, SD ¼ 1.10; Passive-Destructive (e.g., “My Face-
book friends often seem disinterested”), a ¼ 0.79, M ¼ 2.89,
SD ¼ 1.25; and Active-Destructive (e.g., “My Facebook friends point
out the potential down sides of the good event”), a ¼ 0.73, M ¼ 1.99,
SD ¼ 1.06. Following Gable et al. (2004) we also computed a
composite score by subtracting from the Active-Constructive sub-
scale the mean of the other three subscales, M ¼ 1.19, SD ¼ 1.33.
3. Results
3.1. Responses as predictor of perceptions of status update positivity
and importance
We used linear mixed modeling (LMM) to test hypotheses
focusing on status update-level data because status updates varied
in number and were nested within participants. We first conducted
a series of linear mixed models (LMM) separately testing number of
likes and number of positive comments as predictors of perceiving
status updates as positive and as important. Considered on its own,
number of likes received predicted perceiving the subject of one's
status update to be more positive (estimate ¼ 0.012, SE ¼ 0.003,
t(1001.16) ¼ 3.73, p < 0.001, 95% CI [0.006, 0.019]) and important
(estimate ¼ 0.014, SE ¼ 0.005, t(1003.73) ¼ 2.95, p ¼ 0.003, 95% CI
29
[0.005, 0.023]). Number of positive comments received, considered
on its own, did not significantly predict perceiving the subject of
one's status update to be positive (estimate ¼ 0.010, SE ¼ 0.012,
t(1019.23) ¼ 0.87, p ¼ 0.39, 95% CI [-0.012, 0.033] or important
(estimate ¼ 0.031, SE ¼ 0.017, t(1016.70) ¼ 1.86, p ¼ 0.06, 95% CI
[-0.002, 0.063]). We then confirmed (see Table 1) that likes remains
a significant unique predictor of status update positivity and
importance even when accounting for other factors. Thus, partici-
pants' perception of the positivity and importance of one of their
status updates was predicted by the number of likes that status
update had received but not by the number of comments it had
received.
3.2. Responses as predictor of status update memorability
Using LMM, we tested separately number of likes and number of
positive comments as predictors of remembering status updates.
Ability to recall a status update later on was predicted by the
number of likes it received (estimate ¼ 0.007, SE ¼ 0.001,
t(968.81) ¼ 4.65, p < 0.001, 95% CI [0.004, 0.010]) and by the
number of positive comments it received (estimate ¼ 0.018,
SE ¼ 0.005, t(1013.31) ¼ 3.36, p ¼ 0.001, 95% CI [0.008, 0.029]).
However, when we considered likes and positive comments
together in a model that also included control variables (see
Table 2), only likes continued to uniquely predict status memora-
bility; positive comments did not. Thus, participants’ ability to
recall a particular status update was uniquely predicted by the
number of likes that status update had received, but was not
uniquely predicted by the number of comments it had received.
3.3. Responses as predictors of satisfaction with the response
received
Using LMM, we tested separately likes and positive comments as
predictors of satisfaction with the responses to one's status up-
dates. Satisfaction with the response received to a status update
was significantly predicted by number of likes it received
(Estimate ¼ 0.036, SE ¼ 0.003, t(1034.19) ¼ 10.69, p < 0.001, 95% CI
[0.030, 0.043]) and by number of positive comments it received
(Estimate ¼ 0.066, SE ¼ 0.012, t(924.57) ¼ 5.63, p < 0.001, 95% CI
[0.043, 0.088]) when each predictor was examined separately.
When likes and positive comments were considered simulta-
neously while also controlling for other variables, likes remained a
significant unique predictor of satisfaction but positive comments
did not, as shown in Table 2. Thus, participants' satisfaction with the
responses to each of their status updates depended upon the
amount of likes those status updates received, and more so than it
depended on the amount of positive comments they received.
3.4. Responses as predictor of subjective well-being
We had hypothesized that reporting receiving more likes and
positive comments would be associated with reporting higher
subjective well-being. Subjective well-being was correlated with
mean number of likes received (r ¼ 0.14, p ¼ 0.03) and with mean
number of positive comments received (r ¼ 0.17, p ¼ 0.01). On an
exploratory basis, we computed a new variable, the total number of
likes and positive comments each participant received on his/her
most popular post. We found that subjective well-being also
correlated with the total number of likes and comments received
on the person's most popular status update (r ¼ 0.21, p ¼ 0.002).
Using regression, we examined whether the relationship be-
tween the response received to one's Facebook status updates and
subjective well-being would remain when we also accounted for
other factors. As shown in Table 3, the total number of likes and
30 A.L. Zell, L. Moeller / Computers in Human Behavior 78 (2018) 26e33

Table 1
Linear mixed models predicting perception of status updates subjects as positive and as important.

Parameter Status Update Perceived as Positive Status Update Perceived as Important

Estimate (SE) t 95% CI Estimate (SE) t 95% CI

** **
Intercept 8.384 (0.231) 36.27 [7.928, 8.841] 5.880 (0.351) 16.76 [5.188, 6.573]
Level 1 (status update-specific)
** *
Likes 0.016 (0.004) 4.13 [0.009, 0.024] 0.012 (0.006) 2.12 [0.001, 0.024]
Positive Com. -0.027 (0.016) 1.66 [-0.059, 0.005] 0.037 (0.024) 1.55 [-0.010, 0.083]
Neutral/Negative Com. -0.397 (0.058) 6.87** [-0.510, 0.283] -0.174 (0.083) 2.09* [-0.337, 0.011]
Participant's Own Com. 0.072 (0.039) 1.85 [-0.005, 0.149] -0.031 (0.057) 0.55 [-0.143, 0.081]
Days old -0.023 (0.016) 1.41 [-0.055, 0.009] -0.022 (0.024) 0.94 [-0.068, 0.024]
Level 2 (participant-specific)
Age 0.017 (0.008) 1.97 [0.000, 0.033] -0.003 (0.013) 0.25 [-0.028, 0.022]
Gender 0.203 (0.245) 0.83 [-0.280, 0.686] 0.479 (0.370) 1.29 [-0.251, 1.209]
# of Facebook friends 0.000 (0.000) 1.11 [-0.001, 0.000] <0.001 (<0.001) 0.68 [<0.001, 0.001]
# of status updates -0.030 (0.015) 2.03* [-0.060, 0.001] -0.046 (0.023) 2.02* [-0.092, 0.001]

Note. All predictors mean-centered, except gender (scored as female ¼ 1, male ¼ 0). Com. ¼ Comments.
*
p < 0.05, **p < 0.01.

Table 2
Linear mixed models predicting recall of status updates and satisfaction with responses received to status updates.

Parameter Recall of Status Update Satisfaction with Response to Status Update

Estimate (SE) t 95% CI Estimate (SE) t 95% CI

Intercept 0.888 (0.092) 9.67** [0.707, 1.070] 6.755 (0.339) 19.92** [6.086, 7.425]
Level 1 (status update-specific)
Likes 0.007 (0.002) 3.82** [0.003, 0.010] 0.037 (0.004) 9.06** [0.029, 0.045]
Positive Com. -0.005 (0.008) 0.64 [-0.020, 0.010] -0.003 (0.016) 0.17 [-0.034, 0.029]
Neutral/Negative Com. -0.005 (0.026) 0.20 [-0.057, 0.046] -0.037 (0.058) 0.65 [-0.150, 0.076]
Participant's Own Com. 0.072 (0.025) 2.86** [0.023, 0.121] 0.101 (0.041) 2.44* [0.020, 0.182]
Days old -0.078 (0.007) 11.13** [-0.092, 0.064] -0.007 (0.016) 0.43 [-0.039, 0.025]
Positivity 0.019 (0.014) 1.38 [-0.008, 0.046] 0.229 (0.032) 7.11** [0.166, 0.292]
Importance 0.009 (0.010) 0.95 [-0.010, 0.028] -0.047 (0.022) 2.08* [-0.091, 0.003]
Level 2 (participant-specific)
Age 0.001 (0.003) 0.36 [-0.005, 0.008] 0.021 (0.012) 1.75 [-0.003, 0.045]
Gender 0.086 (0.098) 0.88 [-0.108, 0.281] 0.581 (0.350) 1.66 [-0.109, 1.270]
# of Facebook friends 0.000 (0.000) 0.58 [0.000, 0.000] <0.001 (<0.001) 0.05 [-0.001, 0.001]
# of status updates -0.029 (0.006) 5.01** [-0.041, 0.017] 0.024 (0.024) 1.03 [-0.022, 0.071]

Note. All predictors mean-centered, except gender (scored as female ¼ 1, male ¼ 0). Com. ¼ Comments.
*
p < 0.05, **p < 0.01.

Table 3
Simultaneous regressions predicting subjective well-being and perceptions of how supportively one's Facebook community responds to one's good news.

Predictor Subjective Well-Being PRCA-F Composite Passive-Destructive subscale of

PRCA-F

Zero-order correlation b Zero-order correlation b Zero-order correlation b

*
Gender (female ¼ 1, male ¼ 0) 0.01 -0.10 0.14 0.09 -0.10 -0.04
Age 0.15** 0.19** 0.11 0.03 -0.23** -0.16*
Number of Facebook friends 0.05 0.03 0.07 0.06 <0.01 0.02
Number of status updates posted in last 2 weeks 0.04 -0.03 0.14 0.04 -0.19** -0.11
Number of likes þ comments received on most 0.21** 0.20** 0.16* 0.14* -0.21** -0.19**
popular status update in last 2 weeks
F(5, 218) ¼ 4.00** F(5, 218) ¼ 1.83 F(5, 218) ¼ 4.35**

Note. PRCA-F refers to Perceived Responses to Capitalization Attempts scale (Gable et al., 2004) modified for Facebook. For correlations that involve ratings of specific status
updates n ¼ 219e224; for correlations that do not involve ratings of status updates n ¼ 307.
*
p < 0.05, **p < 0.01.

positive comments on the participant's most popular post was a
significant unique predictor of subjective well-being even when
accounting for gender, age, number of Facebook friends, and fre-
quency of posting on Facebook. We found a similar but weaker
pattern of results when we replaced total number of likes and
comments on the person's most popular status update with mean
number of likes received (b ¼ 0.14, t(216) ¼ 2.12, p ¼ 0.04) or with
mean number of positive comments received (b ¼ 0.14,
t(213) ¼ 2.04, p ¼ 0.04). Thus, the more likes and positive comments
participants reported having received on their recent status up-
dates (and particularly on their most popular one), the higher in
self-esteem and happiness they then described themselves as
being.
3.5. Responses as predictor of Perceived Responses to Capitalization
Attempts on Facebook
Before conducting further analyses with the PRCA-F, we first
 A.L. Zell, L. Moeller / Computers in Human Behavior 78 (2018) 26e33
factor analyzed its items to check that they loaded onto four sub-
scales as expected. Principal component analysis with varimax
rotation did yield four factors: Passive-Destructive
(Eigenvalue ¼ 3.25, 27.08% of the variance), Active-Destructive
(Eigenvalue ¼ 2.06, 17.2% of the variance), Passive-Constructive
(Eigenvalue ¼ 1.45, 12.08% of the variance) and Active-
Constructive (Eigenvalue ¼ 1.05, 8.77% of the variance).
The PRCA-F composite score was not significantly related to
mean likes (r ¼ 0.10, p ¼ 0.15) or mean positive comments (r ¼ 0.11,
p ¼ 0.12), but was correlated with the total likes and comments on
the person's most popular post (r ¼ 0.16, p ¼ 0.02). Using regression
(see Table 3), we confirmed that the association between the total
likes and positive comments on participants' most popular status
updates and their PRCA-F composites scores remained when ac-
counting for other factors.
Because the PRCA-F composite score did not correlate as
strongly and consistently as we had expected with the responses
received, we carried out exploratory analyses looking at each PRCA-
F subscale separately. The Active-Constructive subscale was not
significantly correlated with mean likes (r ¼ 0.10, p ¼ 0.14), mean
positive comments (r ¼ 0.08, p ¼ 0.27) or total likes and comments
on the participant's most popular post (r ¼ 0.11, p ¼ 0.11) as we had
assumed it would be. The Passive-Constructive subscale showed no
significant correlations (ps > 0.10), as we expected. The Active-
Destructive subscale, to our surprise, correlated positively with
mean likes (r ¼ 0.13, p ¼ 0.05) and mean positive comments
(r ¼ 0.17, p ¼ 0.002), but not with mean neutral or negative com-
ments (r ¼ 0.04, ns).
Finally consistent with our predictions, the Passive-Destructive
subscale correlated negatively with mean positive comments
received (r ¼ 0.21, p ¼ 0.002) and with the total number of likes
and comments received on one's most popular status update
(r ¼ 0.21, p ¼ 0.002), though not significantly with the mean
number of likes received (r ¼ 0.11, p ¼ 0.12). As shown in Table 3,
we confirmed that the association between total likes and positive
comments on participants' most popular posts and their scores on
the Passive-Destructive subscale remained when we account for
other factors. Replacing this variable with the other measures of
response to one's status updates, we found that mean number of
positive comments received also uniquely predicted scores on the
Passive-Destructive subscale (b ¼ 0.17, t(213) ¼ 2.52, p ¼ 0.01)
but mean number of likes received did not (b ¼ -0.13, t(216) ¼ -1.93,
p ¼ 0.06).
Thus, participants’ perception that their Facebook friends are
interested in and care about their good news (as measured by low
scores on the Passive-Destructive subscale of the PRCA-F) was
predicted by the average number of comments their status updates
had been receiving and also by the amount of likes and comments
received on their most popular status update, but not by the
average number of likes received. The PRCA-F composite scale score
showed a more modest relationship with the amount of likes and
comments received on participants most popular status update,
and was not predicted by mean likes or mean comments. The
weaker associations with the composite score appear to be due to
the fact that the Active-Constructive and Active-Destructive sub-
scales did not relate to likes and comments received in the way we
had expected.
3.5.1. PRCA-F and satisfaction with responses
Mean satisfaction with the responses received to one's status
updates correlated with the composite PRCA-F score (r ¼ 0.23,
p < 0.001) and with the Passive-Destructive subscale (Passive-
Destructive r ¼ 0.27, p < 0.001; Active-Destructive r ¼ 0.13,
p ¼ 0.05; Passive-Constructive r ¼ 0.08, p ¼ 0.25; Active-
Constructive r ¼ 0.12, p ¼ 0.08).
31
3.5.2. PRCA-F and subjective well-being
Subjective well-being correlated with the composite PRCA-F
score (r ¼ 0.28, p < 0.001) and particularly with the Passive-
Destructive subscale (Passive-Destructive r ¼ 0.36, p < 0.001;
Active-Destructive r ¼ 0.24, p < 0.001; Passive-Constructive
r ¼ 0.02, p ¼ 0.68; Active-Constructive r ¼ 0.13, p ¼ 0.02). Five
simultaneous regressions accounting for participant gender, age,
number of Facebook friends, and number of posts in the last 2
weeks revealed the same pattern, with subjective well-being
significantly predicted by the composite PRCA-F score (b ¼ 0.27,
t(301) ¼ 4.71, p < 0.001) and the Passive-Destructive (b ¼ 0.35,
t(301) ¼ 6.20, p < 0.001), Active-Destructive (b ¼ 0.23,
t(301) ¼ 4.06, p < 0.001), and Active-Constructive (b ¼ 0.12,
t(301) ¼ 2.09, p ¼ 0.04), but not Passive-Constructive (b ¼ 0.01,
t(301) ¼ 0.17, p ¼ 0.87) subscales. Thus, participants who reported
viewing their Facebook friends as being interested, supportive, and
excited for their good news also reported being relatively high in
self-esteem and happiness.
4. Discussion
4.1. Do responses to Facebook status updates matter?
Results supported our primary hypotheses. First, we found that
receiving more responses to one's status update was associated
with perceiving that status update as more positive and more
important. Second, participants exhibited better recall of their
status updates that had received more (vs. fewer) responses. Third,
the more responses participants reported having received on their
status updates, the greater happiness and self-esteem they subse-
quently reported. Fourth, the more responses participants report-
ing having received, the more they perceived their Facebook friends
to be interested in and care about their good news. As we hy-
pothesized, then, receiving more responses to one's Facebook sta-
tus updates was associated with more positive outcomes.
4.2. Is receiving comments more strongly related than receiving
likes to positive outcomes?
The capitalization processes model asserts that the positive ef-
fects of capitalization attempts depend at least somewhat on the
perceived responsiveness (Reis, Clark, & Holmes, 2004) of the part-
ner, in other words, the extent to which the person perceives their
partner as paying attention to them, understanding them, sup-
porting them, and feeling pleased for them. This model was
developed with interpersonal communication in mind. Applying
this model to Facebook raises the question, what kind of reaction to
a status updateean online masspersonal communication
(O'Sullivan & Carr, 2017)dwould be perceived as responsive?
Clicking like takes so little effort that one might doubt that likes
are valued by their recipient or have any impact. Consistent with
that idea, Carr, Wohn, and Hayes (2016) had found that the more
automatic and mindless likes were perceived to be, the less sup-
portive they were perceived to be. Burke and Kraut (2014) also
found that participants reported being closer to individuals the
more messages, posts, and comments they had received from those
individuals, but that likes received from those individuals did not
correlate with changes in closeness. Aligning with those findings, in
the present study it was the number of comments received (not the
number of likes received) that correlated with thinking that one's
Facebook community cares about and is interested in one's good
news. The greater effortfulness of comments might lead them
(relative to likes) to be perceived as more meaningful indicators of
genuine care and interest.
However, our other findings suggest that we should not be too
32 A.L. Zell, L. Moeller / Computers in Human Behavior 78 (2018) 26e33
quick to dismiss likes as unimportant. We found that number of
likes was actually a better predictor than number of comments was
of perceiving a status update as positive and important, remem-
bering it, and being satisfied with the response received to it. Great
numbers of likes may convey a signal of social proof affirming the
positivity and importance of one's post. Additionally, the receipt of
many likes on a status update may repeatedly call the author's
attention back to it.
We also found that the amount of response (likes and positive
comments) participants received on their most popular posts was a
particularly strong correlate of subjective well-being and of
perceiving one's Facebook community to be interested in one's
good news. This exploratory finding implies that people's global
impression that they are well-liked and cared about by their
Facebook community may be more closely related to the greatest
amount of response they received than to the average amount of
response that they received, consistent with peak-end theory (e.g.,
Fredrickson, 2000). In light of these intriguing but exploratory
findings, we encourage any future researchers in this area to look at
the various ways of measuring responsiveness on Facebook.
4.3. Assessing the modified version of the Perceived Responses to
Capitalization Attempts scale (PRCA-F)
The Perceived Responses to Capitalization Scale was designed by
Gable et al. (2004) to measure perceptions of a partner's tendency
to respond with enthusiasm rather than passivity, disinterest, or
negativity when one shares positive personal events. In the present
study we modified it to assess participants' perceptions of how
supportively their Facebook community responds when they share
their good news. The present study provides initial evidence for the
validity of this version modified for Facebook (PRCA-F). First, we
observed a four-factor structure that matched the subscales of the
original PRCA (Gable et al., 2004). The subscales showed fairly good
reliability (with the exception of the Active-Constructive, a ¼ 0.51).
Second, we found that the composite score correlated with sub-
jective well-being and that the Passive-Destructive subscale
showed a particularly strong (negative) relationship with subjec-
tive well-being, consistent with findings obtained with the original
PRCA (Demir & Davidson, 2013; Gable et al., 2004). Third, we found
that the PRCA-F composite score correlated with objectively
observable behavior: the total likes and positive comments given
on participants' most popular status updates. Fourth, the PRCA-F
composite score correlated with participants' mean satisfaction
with the responses they received.
That being said, we recommend that any future users of the
PRCA-F look at the individual PRCA-F subscales, rather than only at
the composite score. In the present study, the Passive-Destructive
subscale (which measures perceptions of one's Facebook friends
as inattentive, disinterested, and uncaring) was the subscale most
strongly related to subjective well-being, amount of responses
received, and satisfaction with responses received. Participants
seemed to make inferences about how interested and caring their
Facebook community is based on the amount of responses (espe-
cially comments) they received on their status updates. The other
three subscales, however, showed diverging patterns of relation-
ships with our outcomes variables. For researchers who might be
interested in using the PRCA-F in future work, we provide addi-
tional analyses regarding the PRCA-F in the Supplemental
Materials.
4.4. Theoretical implications
Receiving more responses to one's Facebook status updates was
linked with valuing and remembering what one had posted about,
reporting higher happiness and self-esteem, and perceiving one's
Facebook network to be a more interested and caring community.
These results parallel prior findings obtained in research on capi-
talization processes in personal communication. This suggests that
Gable and Reis's (2010) model of capitalization processes can be
fruitfully applied to online masspersonal communicationsdFace-
book status updatesdif one redefines the audience as a group and
redefines an active-constructive response as a higher number of
likes and comments.
Although the present study was specifically designed to
investigate whether the capitalization processes model (Gable &
Reis, 2010) could be applied to an online context, the present
findings may also accord well with other theories. For example,
the Motivation Technology model (Sundar, Jia, Waddell, & Huang,
2015) suggests that to the extent that technologies afford people
opportunities to meet their needs for competence, relatedness,
and autonomy (drawing upon Self-Determination Theory e Ryan
& Deci, 2000), people will feel intrinsically motivated to use the
technology. This model states that to the extent that technology
affords opportunity for interaction, people will feel a sense of
connection and relatedness. Consonant with that, we found that
receiving more likes and comments from others was associated
with feeling more satisfied with the response received and with
perceiving one's Facebook community as more interested and
caring.
4.5. Limitations
Several limitations pertain, including use of a non-
representative sample. Another is the fact that we relied upon
our participants’ honesty and accuracy in reporting numbers of
likes and comments and in reporting their status updates from
memory without looking at Facebook.
Additionally, participants answered questions about how many
people liked and commented on their status updates before
answering questions about their subjective well-being. This may
have influenced participants to base their sense of well-being on
the number of people who responded to their Facebook posts more
than they normally do in their day-to-day lives. On the other hand,
the fact that Facebook visibly lists the number of people who
clicked like or commented may already encourage its users to focus
on numbers.
It is important to note that the present study used a correla-
tional design and cannot demonstrate causation. Our findings are
consistent with the idea that the amount of response received to a
status update affects how positive and important it is perceived to
be and how well it is remembered. Furthermore, we attempted to
account for the influence of potentially confounding variables of
participant age, gender, number of Facebook friends, and frequency
of posting, as well as status update age, positivity, and importance.
However, as we did not use an experimental design, we cannot
entirely rule out other explanations for these associations. For
example, the present findings are consistent with our idea that
seeing that one's status update receive many likes enhances the
seeming positivity and importance of one's post. However, status
updates about more (vs. less) important and positive events also
seem likely to accrue more likes and comments, and we speculate
that the causal influence runs both ways. Similarly, although we
found that amount of response received correlated with subjective
well-being and with perceiving one's Facebook community to be
more interested and caring, we cannot determine whether these
are causal relationships. Possible confounds include extraversion
(Lonnqvist & große Deters, 2016) and differences in perceived
offline support (Trepte, Dienlin, & Reinecke, 2015).
 A.L. Zell, L. Moeller / Computers in Human Behavior 78 (2018) 26e33
4.6. Conclusion
Prior research (Gable et al., 2004; Lambert et al., 2013; Otto et al.,
2015) has found that receiving active-constructive responses to
one's capitalization attempts in face-to-face interactions leads to
positive outcomes. This study supports and extends that work by
showing that receiving likes and comments from one's Facebook
community is also associated with positive intrapersonal and
interpersonal outcomes. On a practical note, the present findings,
though correlational, are consistent with the idea that clicking like
might help to affirm the positivity and importance of someone's
news and increase their likelihood of later remembering that event.
Or, that typing a comment on someone's status update may help to
allay the recipient's fears that their Facebook community is not
actually interested in reading about their good news. When people
share personal news, it is important to them that their audience
display interest and enthusiasm: This seems to be the case on
Facebook walls just as it is in face-to-face interactions.
Acknowledgements:
Thank you to Chris Schatsneider for generously sharing his time
and statistical expertise.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data related to this article can be found at http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.08.050.
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