What's in a Like? Motivations for Pressing the Like Button.

Lightweight evaluations of content, such as thumbs-up, Liking, and favoriting, are an important aspect of social media interactions. Although minimal, these acts can carry a variety of meanings and implications. Prior research has revealed various motives and identified some recurring themes, but is often based on small samples or survey procedures prone to memory bias. In the present research, we asked people to view posts they had recently Liked on Facebook and report motives for each concrete post. We offer insights into the prevalence of previously hypothesized motives, and their associations with the content of posts, the relationship between sender and receiver, and the personality of the sender.