Stat-Aholic

I have a confession to make,
like many other bloggers, am obsessed with checking my stats.
Yes, I'm a stat-aholic and a comment whore.

A few times a day, I log in and check out how many people have visited me today, which pages people are looking at, what pages they are coming from, what keywords people are using to find me, and if I'm really feeling needy I check out the visitor paths and cities that people are visiting from.

All in all it wastes a lot of time, but I can't stop.
I need it.
I need to know that The S Spot is loved!

As a handful of you know, I am currently employed as a super awesome research assistant. Lately I have been working intensively on some self-esteem projects around sociometer theory.
After a long day in the lab, I was thinking about one of the experiments I had just been reviewing and it struck me how the stat counter software kind of mimics social cues of relational value.

[Now stick with me, things are going to get confusing for a moment]

According to sociometer theory, our state self-esteem is always in flux (trait self-esteem is more stable, in case you were wondering) - it is constantly responding to cues from our environment. Subconsciously we are always watching for cues that indicate how much people like us (our relational value).

When we perceive that people like us we get a little boost of happy-good feelings (positive affect) and tend to feel a little more secure in ourselves. When we get a cue that people don't like us, we feel down (negative affect) and usually try to change things so that people will like us again.

According to sociometer theory, this is natural and healthy because if we didn't try to get people to like us, then we could end up alone and for our ancestors alone = dead. So it makes sense that we would have learned to be sensitive to cues about how much people like us at the moment (and in general).

SO
[I bet you thought I forgot my point!]

Stat counters continually give me cues as to what people think about my blog(s) - it tells me which pages people like and it tells me how many people are coming. On days where I have a high count of hits I feel good - "yay my blog is doing well!", on days where not many people visit my site, I feel down and wonder what I need to do to get more people to visit (and thus love) my blog.

As I'm sure my fellow bloggers can confirm, we put a lot of ourselves into our blogs, so when people don't like our blogs (or don't visit them), it can hurt on a more personal level.

Bloggers might be the most sensitive people out there to social cues because we are so addicted to our stats and measure our blog/personal value in so many ways - like with comments.
Comments are even better than statcounter because it shows that not only are people visiting your site, but they like it enough to comment!

They joy of receiving comments is definitely something that bloggers understand - which is why I think it's usually bloggers leaving comments on their colleagues' pages while the anonymous readers remain silent.

So what's the point of my post?
Just letting you know that you're not completely crazy for checking your stats several times a day and that being a comment whore is okay.
Carry On. ^_~

(pix borrowed from here)

stats, counter, comments, blog, sex blog, blogging, bloggers