The Psychology Behind Why X Decided to Hide "Likes"

Source: Chris Davis/Unsplash

There has been a fair amount of discussion about why Elon Musk’s X has chosen to hide users’ “likes.” Some have cheekily suggested this is due to Musk being criticized for his own likes, while others see it as a further attempt to distinguish X from its old incarnation (Twitter). A psychological eye on this could see the move as an attempt to increase the robustness of a user’s likes in terms of reflecting their actual opinions and preferences, and so being a better reflection of the individual; in short, their likes will reflect their authentic self more than their persona.

Social media likes have famously been used to predict personality for years, including the famous claim that analyzing 300 likes can allow for a better understanding of an individual than their spouse has. With this new move, X (which will still have access to user likes) will be better placed to understand who the individual really is.

Why might this be? Publicly viewable likes would have been catered to an individual’s persona more than their "authentic self." Carl Jung conceptualized that the individual embodies different selves, including one that is publicly put forward (the persona). Now that others will not see your likes, you are more likely (pun intended) to like tweets that reflect deeper opinions, and not necessarily those that you would state publicly. Indeed, X informed its users that this was one aspect of the move—to promote or at least allow users to like “edgier” content.

Another factor that will see this move leading to changes in likes is explained by the “Hawthorne Effect," which describes the phenomenon of people changing their behavior when they know they are being observed.

On one hand, there is a liberating aspect to this. On the other, it is easy to envisage this fueling the fire of polarization that has been, in part, attributed to social media. Without the tempering force of being publicly viewable, “edgier” content is likely to garner more engagement, which, in turn, will lead it to be viewed by more users of the platform.

More positive potential is held when we consider the concept of “preference falsification.” Coined by economist Timur Kuran, this describes a social force that weighs on people, motivating them to suppress their real opinions if they are considered socially unacceptable and their expression would come with a social cost. A common illustration of the phenomenon is public expressions of support for dictators when straying from this loyalty can come at a terribly high cost. Go to downtown Damascus and ask 100 people if they love and support Bashar Al Assad. It is likely that 100 will exclaim that they do.

Hiding likes will allow a loosening of such pressures to a degree, but people will still be guarded, given their likes are viewable by the company itself. Concerns about this data being shared should also weigh on people’s minds.

With X having access to more authentic “like” data, advertisers will be able to better target users. Attaining access to an individual’s “real self” will make for more effective targeting than merely their persona. Targeting an individual’s authentic self will be more effective than targeting their persona.

Many studies have now reported on the robust relationship between social media “likes” and personality prediction. These studies rely on publicly accessible “likes.” The hiding of likes might yield the forking of the digital self, with a "digital persona" and an "authentic digital self" emerging. Psychologists readily talk about an individual embodying multiple selves in the real world; this distinction seems increasingly relevant to the online world, too.