A new study has revealed that people who feel insecure in relationships seek attention on Facebook in order to be felt loved.
Researchers at Union College suggested that there are at least two kinds of active Facebook users: people who are higher in attachment anxiety, and people who are higher in extraversion.
People who were higher in attachment anxiety, that is, they worry that other people don't love them as much as they want to be loved, and are chronically concerned about rejection and abandonment, reported greater amounts of what the study refers to as "feedback seeking" on Facebook.
Because these people need a lot of reassurance that they are loved and are very sensitive to other people's opinions about them, they turn to Facebook, with its 1.2 billion users, for feedback.
Joshua Hart, associate professor of psychology, said that anxiously attached individuals' level of feedback sensitivity correlates with how active they are on Facebook and it appears that this strategy may work: they report receiving more attention than people lower in attachment anxiety.
The study is published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.
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