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Key points
- Businesses often encourage consumers to share photos with others and post content from their experiences on social media.
- Research suggests that taking photos with the intent of sharing actually degrades the enjoyment of the experience.
- We’re much more self-conscious about our photos when we know we’ll be sharing it with others, especially those we don't know well.
“Sharing is caring." At least that’s what you’re told when it comes to sharing photos.
Anywhere you go, you’re encouraged to take photos and share them on social media. You’ll even be given incentives or discounts to use specific hashtags. The push for user-generated content is massive. But what does this do to the consumer experience, and specifically to the act of photo-taking itself? Do we enjoy taking photos differently depending on the intent?
A group of researchers led by Alixandra Barasch at NYU conducted a series of experiments to investigate these questions.
The Impact of Photo-Taking Motivation and Enjoyment
In the first study, the researchers wanted to establish the general relationship between photo-taking motivation and enjoyment. To explore this, they approached tourists in Philadelphia who were taking pictures of the famous “Rocky” statue and had them fill out a quick survey.
The results found that people taking photos for themselves — and not for others — enjoyed the photos significantly more.
Study 2 fleshed out this correlational data with a more mechanistic, experimental account. The experiment had a holiday twist: 440 students were recruited for the study right before Christmas and were instructed to take at least 10 photos. The members of one group (Self-Goal), they were told to take pictures so that they could make an album to keep for themselves. Those in the other group (Share-Goal) were told to take photos to share on social media.
The results indicate that people who took photos to share enjoyed the photo-sharing experience significantly less than those who took the pictures for themselves. Participants in this group also remembered their experience more from a third-person perspective, indicating that taking photos to share led them to ruminate over how the experience (and the photos) would be judged.
Study 3 was conducted to see if it’s the presence of the photo-taking goal, or the salience of the goal, that affects outcomes. All participants agreed that “Two main reasons why people take photos are so that they can look back at the photos themselves and so that they can share the photos with others."
The salience of the photo-taking goal was derived from telling participants that their primary goal should be either to “take photos to share" or “take photos for themselves.” The results suggest that when the share-goal was more salient, it negatively impacted the enjoyment of the experience.
Studies 4 and 5 aimed to understand the mechanisms at play better. In both studies, participants were instructed to take pictures either for themselves (Self-Goal) or to share (Share-Goal). In Study 4, all participants completed The Trait Self-Consciousness Scale, which provides a metric for how self-conscious they are.
The results again found that taking photos to share diminishes enjoyment. In addition, a person’s degree of self-consciousness plays a key role: When taking pictures to share with others, the more self-conscious one is, the less they enjoy the experience.
In study 5 in particular, the researchers sought to understand the impact of the audience. The Share-Goal group was divided into two cohorts: One shared their photos with close friends and family, while the other shared them with acquaintances.
Results suggest that participants enjoyed sharing less with acquaintances, an effect which was mediated by self-consciousness. When sharing with friends and family, people were less conscious and more readily enjoyed the experience.
Implications Beyond Personal Photo-Taking
User-generated content is a massive trend. It's no surprise that brands are constantly trying to encourage through hashtags and social media photo ops: “Sharing is caring," as they say. However, this research indicates that there’s a crucial trade-off in many instances: Sharing the experience has a negative impact on the consumer experience, and by extension, the impression of the brand. This is especially the case if the consumer is self-conscious by nature and sharing the photos with people beyond close friends and family members. As a result, brands may do well to consider encouraging consumers to take photos for their own memories instead.
Sharing with others typically makes us feel warm and fuzzy. But when it comes to taking photos, especially in the consumer environment, we may be better off thinking only about ourselves.
This post also appears on the neuroscience of branding blog
References
Barasch, A., Zauberman, G., & Diehl, K. (2018). How the intention to share can undermine enjoyment: Photo-taking goals and evaluation of experiences. Journal of Consumer Research, 44(6), 1220-1237.
