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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 17, 2026

Creating Virtual-hand and Virtual-face Illusions to Investigate Self-representation

Creating Virtual-hand and Virtual-face Illusions to Investigate Self-representation

Published on: March 1, 2017

Fictional privacy among Facebook users.

Robert Lemieux¹

¹Communication Department, McDaniel College, Westminster, MD 21157, USA. rlemieux@mcdaniel.edu

Psychological Reports

|October 11, 2012

Summary

Most Facebook users accept friendship requests from strangers. This study found 72% of participants accepted a fictional unknown person, raising privacy concerns.

Area of Science:

Social Psychology
Human-Computer Interaction
Online Social Networks

Background:

Social networking sites (SNS) like Facebook have become integral to social interaction.
Understanding user behavior on these platforms is crucial for privacy and security research.
The dynamics of accepting connections from unknown individuals on SNS are not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the propensity of Facebook users to accept friendship requests from ambiguous, unknown individuals.
To explore the underlying factors influencing the acceptance of such requests.

Main Methods:

A fictional Facebook profile with minimal personal information was created.
This profile sent friend requests to a sample of Facebook members.

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The acceptance rate of these requests was recorded and analyzed.

Main Results:

A significant majority of participants, 72% (325 members), accepted the friendship request from the unknown individual.
This high acceptance rate suggests a potential underestimation of privacy risks by users.

Conclusions:

Facebook users may exhibit a high degree of trust or a disregard for privacy when interacting with unknown individuals online.
Findings highlight the need for further research into online social norms, reciprocity, and the perceived risks associated with sharing personal information and images.