Face off: Implications of visual cues on initiating friendship on Facebook

Abstract

This research investigates how moderating factors and theoretically relevant contextual variables affect impression formation and the willingness to initiate virtual friendship. An experiment examined both main and interaction effects for visual cues, profile owner’s gender, and evaluator’s gender; a 2 (stimulus gender: male and female) × 3 (visual conditions: attractive, unattractive, and no-photo) × 2 (evaluator’s gender: male and female) between subjects model analysis of variance (ANOVA) was employed. A three-way interaction between gender and appearance was revealed. The results indicated that both male and female subjects were more willing to initiate friendships with opposite-sex profile owners with attractive photos. Subjects also displayed comparatively higher willingness to make friends with profile owners who did not include visual cues than with those who revealed an unattractive photo. The hyperpersonal model was supported and extended to address gender attributes.