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RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT 2 ISU Introduction From the environmental perspective in psychology, the environment is said to have a strong influence on the human behavior. Concerning this point of view, we can formulate a significant connection on how various social networking platforms on the Internet today may create vital impact on the prevailing human behavior. Specifically, the proponent of the work at hand is interested to find young people’s social behavior towards alcoholic drinking as influenced online via social networking sites.

To figure this out, two important research studies relevant to the above concern are employed in the work at hand with particular consideration of their individual research questions, experiments, methodologies and results. The Research Studies The research study “Alcohol and the Social Network: Online Social Networking Sites and College Students’ Perceived Drinking Norms” provided an investigation of the potential impact of alcohol-related contents on various online social networking sites on the perceived drinking norms of the college students (Fournier, Hall, Ricke & Storey, 2013).

In the experiment, 57 students were able to view a website and asked about their experience in viewing the website. Respondents in this experiment were divided into two groups, the Alcohol Condition and No-Alcohol Condition. It was revealed that the respondents who viewed alcohol-related contents on Facebook have higher college drinking norms compared to those who were not able to see those materials. There was a higher perceived frequency in the Alcohol condition with mean equivalent to 7.90 and a 5.

05 standard deviation compared to the 5.93 mean and 2.04 variability measures in the No-Alcohol group. The above finding is supported by another related research study “Adolescent Alcohol-Related Risk Cognitions: The Roles of Social Norms and Social Networking Sites”. This study provided the evidence that will support the finding that descriptive norms for alcohol use, as portrayed by Facebook profiles, have impact on willingness to use, prototypes, attitudes toward use and perceived vulnerability (Litt & Stock, 2011).

Litt and Stock, the proponents of this study wanted to find out if adolescents who have exposure on alcohol use as depicted by Facebook profiles may have higher risk for cognitions to predict alcohol use than their counterparts who did not have any or less chance to observe alcohol use. Their finding suggests that those respondents who perceived that alcohol use is normative based on what they observed from Facebook profiles have higher risk for cognitions shown to predict alcohol use compared to those groups with no evidence of perceived alcohol use as normative based on the Facebook profiles shown to them.

Just like the study of Fournier et al, 189 participants were randomly assigned for this study to either of the two Facebook conditions, alcohol user condition and control condition. Participants under the alcohol user condition were shown Facebook profiles of students drinking alcohol and those in the control group were not shown such information. Based on the correlation, at 95 percent level of confidence, there was a higher relationship (0.49 to 0.67) between normative perception of alcohol use (especially older peers) and willingness, prototypes, positive attitudes toward alcohol use, older age and past use (Litt & Stock, 2011).

Furthermore, it was found that the more time spent on social networking site, the more there will be greater normative perceptions of use and willingness to drink, more favorable prototypes and more positive attitudes. Analysis The consistent findings of the two-related research studies suggest that online social networking platforms will have indeed a significant impact on the behavior of the subjects, especially those who are influenced by peers or the prevailing social norms. This suggests the point that norms and peers may have significant influence on the actual attitude or behavior of adolescents towards alcohol use, with great influence coming from the social networking sites where friends have continuous virtual connection.

This eventually promotes the idea that the environment has an impact on the potential behavior of an individual. Online social networking sites, based on the two studies may provide the relevant norms and this eventually will create an impact on the behavior of the individuals toward a certain subject. As remarkably stated based on the findings of the two research studies considered in the work at hand, the subjects who were exposed to the norms of alcohol drinking are vulnerable to employ such behavior in the actual world.

This shows us an empirical evidence to support the idea that the environment has a remarkable influence on an individual’s prevailing behavior. Conclusion The work at hand just presented findings from the two empirical studies that will support the idea that the environment has an important role to play for us to understand at some point the prevailing behavior of an individual toward a certain subject or social action. References Fournier, A. K., Hall, E., Ricke, P., & Storey, B. (2013). Alcohol and the Social Network: Online Social Networking Sites and College Students’ Perceived Drinking Norms.

Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 2(2), 86-95. Litt, D. M., & Stock, M. L. (2011). Adolescent Alcohol-Related Risk Cognitions: The Roles of Social Norms and Social Networking Sites. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 25(4), 708-713.