For sure. What they are actually researching is negative punishment (or the removal of a ‘positive’ stimulus), not the value of how rewarding it is to use Facebook.
It’s a great way to artificially inflate the value of something. For example, game developers exploit this to increase the amount players will pay in free-to-play games.
Instead of charging a player for rare items, they charge the player for inventory space so they are not forced to part with items. They pay more to avoid the negative punishment of throwing out rare items than they would actually pay for those items.
