Method
Procedures
This study examined the influences of attention theory on happiness and how an in-dividual portrays one’s happiness. We conducted a content analysis of posts tagged with hashtag #happy. We downloaded the 200 most recent posts January 20, 2019 and coded for the presence or absence of specific content elements. The Instagram posts were posted on Instagram and tagged with the hashtag #Happy and/or # Happi-ness between January 9 and January 20. In addition, we analyzed all comments of 200 posts into two group “sincere” and “insincere.” All variables were coded dichoto-mously (0 = absent, 1 = present) by one coder. For the reliability analysis, we ran-domly selected 10% of the material. The analysis generally indicated reliable meas-urement. Krippendorff’s α values were acceptable all (all values, α > .76).
Variables
Reference to Happiness.
This variable was coded as present when the post included an explicit reference to happy thoughts, plans, value, or expression. All posts were categorized by 9 types of life values that considered to be happy - Not Defined (no clear reference), Smile (no content reference), Physical Appearance, Relationship, Travel/Experience, Achieve-ment, Wealth, and spiritual.
Sincerity. This variable was coded as present when the comments of post included an explicit reference to thoughtful expression. All comments were counted and categorized into two groups, sincere and insincere.
Emotions. The following emotional expressions were coded when they were visually or verbally present: Happiness/Happy (e.g., smiling faces, proud/confident faces and gesture).
Demographics. A total of 200 most recent Instagram post from both groups, 100 males and 100 fe-males, were downloaded. We coded whether the post visually (e.g., pictures, visuals) or verbally (e.g., words, phrases) presented a female or male. We did not code for sex when the post ambiguously represents in terms of biological sex. Furthermore, the age of the individual was coded. We coded whether the post included young individ-uals, older adults, or held no age-related information.
Demographics. A total of 500 most recent selfies from individual accounts
between December 1st and 10th in 2021 were downloaded from both sex
groups, 250 males and 250 females. The age of the individual was coded,
whether the post included young individuals, older adults, or held no agerelated
information.
Inconsistency. We coded whether the post explicitly addressed a conflict experience when internal cognitive and emotional content was inconsistent. Inconsistency was coded as pre-sent, for example, when the post presented a verbal statement with a contradictory visual image.
Data Analysis. We calculated descriptive statistics with percentage values and 95% confidence inter-vals based on bootstrapping techniques. The percentage values are significantly differ-ent when the confidence interval does not overlap. The confidence interval lower and upper limits are reported after the percentage value.
RESULTS
There was an explicit reference to happiness in all reviewed posts. In Figure 1, physi-cal appearance was by far the most frequently depicted expression of happiness, fol-lowed by travel/experience, relationship, and achievement. Happiness posts included young adults (91%, 95% CI = 84.2-96.2), followed by youth (2%, 95% CI = 0.0-5.4) and adults (7%, 95% CI = 2.8-10.4). Regardless of biological sex, the physical appearance (36%) was considered to be the aspect of happiness that is 15% more than happiness from the relationship and 27% more than happiness from the achievement. Only a few posts included wealth (1.5%) or spiritual (1%) as consideration of their happiness. We learned that the physical appearance is by far importance factor for young adults’ happiness than experience, relationship, or achievement. Not defined are smiles in only 8% of posts for which there are no content descriptions that refer-ence the picture in the post. It was too difficult to identify what value of life they are considering as their happiness.
Figure 1: Percentage of posts showing a specific type of happiness. N = 200.
Each post has an average of 5.98 (male) and 13.52 (female) comments. Females are 2.3 times likely post more comments and 1.7 times likely click likes the post than males. However, it is important to consider that there were variety numbers of likes for each post based on the popularity of an individual. Regardless of biological sex, each post is receiving only between 12.1 % (female) and 15.5% (male) sincere com-ments among total number of comments. Majority comments between 86.2% (fe-male) and 84.6% (male) were insincere comments. Moreover, the study found that females are 2.3 times more likely to leave comments than males, as seen in Table 1. Regardless of biological sex, both male and female received a significantly larger number of insincere comments (85.7%) than sincere comments (13.1%) of their posts.
Table 2. Instagram post of the total number of Likes vs Comments.
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