With the decision by the Supreme Court to legalize gay across the United States, Facebook decided to enable users to show support for this decision by making their profile picture rainbow colored. Surely, showing support for individuals who are LGBT has the potential to make people in this community feel appreciated, loved, and accepted. And after entire lives spent feeling marginalized and minimalized, this is an amazing thing.

On that alone, (and worries about Facebook using this filter to collect personal data aside), I find the negativity towards people who use this filter a bit puzzling when it comes from people who support LGBT causes. Now, I get that posting an image isn't a monumental feat that deserves a massive amount of praise. And I get that a few people might use this filter at the expense of more intensive and continued activism. But, I can't help but think that some people are negative about this filter because they do not think it actually accomplishes anything (or just so they can feel a bit more sophisticated than the people who use the filter). For reasons already mentioned, I think this is a bit misguided. Humans are highly social beings, and we need support, especially when it comes to having our and values accepted by others. But it also is misguided for another reason, namely, that all this posting can probably enact actual social change in the views of people outside the LGBT community. Nearly a century of research in social psychology makes this quite clear; people are influenced by social norms, and in particular, social norms that are salient/visible.

The "false consensus effect" is people's tendency (though this does not always occur - hence why it is a tendency) to overestimate the amount of people who share their views. An example might be someone who loves peach ice cream. They will tend to overestimate how many people also love peach ice cream. Hence, if a person who opposes (or is fairly neutral towards) LGBT causes is on Facebook, they might just get a more accurate view of how many people support LGBT causes if they see Facebook littered with rainbow-colored pictures (or as one meme puts it, "a skittles looking explosion").

Indeed, research on the impact of social norms on behavior clearly shows that people will adjust their behavior in accordance with social norms. In some of the earliest examples of this, people were far more likely to litter when they were in a messy environment (like a littered car park) than when was cleaned, and this was especially true when they saw people littering.

In other research, psychologists altered how much people were lead to believe that others hold specific beliefs about race in America. In one study, in the condition in which people were lead to believe many other people held stereotypes of Black people, participants indicated more stereotypical views of Black people than when told few people hold these beliefs. As this study was completely anonymous, confidential and private (done alone), this makes it fairly unlikely that participants simply felt a pressure to not express these beliefs. Actual changes in attitudes had occured.

There are many, many more lines of research I could use to support the position that even simple things like rainbow coloring your Facebook page could make a difference (here for instance). But I will end with one more.

There is a lot of research (and here) showing that people tend to think they are less influenced by external sources (e. ., , other people, Facebook pictures) than they actually are. So when we think to ourselves "would I be influenced by this picture?" we probably conclude that we would not, and then extrapolate that belief to other people not being influenced. But, we really are poor judges of this, and indeed, research shows that a lot of us probably would be.

Rainbow colored Facebook images could help in some way to alter views towards . And, even if not, at the very least, it shows support for a group of individuals who have been marginalized and made to feel less than for far too long. And I can imagine that that - even in such a small gesture as a colored profile pic- feels incredible.