Social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter have developed a space for people to express their thoughts and opinions freely. While this can inspire open dialogue, it can also create quite a few disagreements. 

However, new research reveals that just like in-person interactions, intellectually humble behaviour online, such as admitting when you are wrong, leads to peers thinking better of you in cyberspace.

“Willingness to engage in wrongness admission is positively correlated with agreeableness, openness to experience, honesty/humility and emotional intelligence,” writes Adam Fetterman, assistant professor of psychology and director of the Personality, Emotion, and Social Cognition Lab at the University of Houston in the journal Social Psychology.

“With potentially hundreds (or more, depending on their privacy settings) of passive witnesses, the user can admit that they are wrong or avoid doing so. We found that the OSN [online social network] user’s best course of action, here, is to publicly admit that they are wrong.” 

As the proverb goes, ‘Honesty is the best policy,’ especially if you want other people online to think highly of you.

The setup

There were four experiments in which 679 subjects read a staged argument on a Facebook wall between two users. The idea was about an imaginary food additive and displayed common themes of health food discussions on social media websites at the time of the study.

The final post by Participant A contained the twist: In one (admission) condition, Participant A concluded the conversation by saying “...I guess I am wrong and you are right on this. Thanks for posting those links and thanks for the conversation!”

In the other (refusal) condition, Participant A ended the conversation by posting “…I still think I am right and you are wrong. Thanks for posting those links and thanks for the conversation!”  

“Those who witnessed an OSN user engage in wrongness admission rated that user as higher in communion and competence traits compared witnessing a user not engaging in wrongness admission,” says Fetterman.

“Furthermore, we found that those in the wrongness admission condition were more likely to indicate interest in interacting with the admitting user compared to those in the nonadmission conditions.” 

People are social animals; they have an inherent need, a news release notes, to form and maintain relationships. Yet developing relationships online can be difficult because one only has text and image to go on.

“People tend to form the most positive impressions for those on OSNs who display communal, open and humble online behaviours,” says Fetterman.

“Wrongness admission serves as a cue of intellectual humility, communion, and competence. Although the admitter is telling onlookers that they have been incompetent in this instance,” he adds, “it suggests that they are willing to work together and that they are competent enough to recognize faulty knowledge and change it.” 

Fetterman’s sense of humour comes to the fore at the end of the research report: “Therefore, wrongness admission on OSNs appears to lead to better impression formation outcomes than not admitting,” he concludes. 

“At least, that is what we can conclude until someone provides evidence that we are wrong.

If such a time comes, we will never admit it.”