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Super Bowl 2015

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Emotional Contagion

Have you ever wondered why you’re “happy” one day and then “sad” the next? Do your best friends make “you” want to laugh, or slit “your” throat?

Have you just seen a “depressing” movie, or watched the weekend “comedy” shows on MSNBC and come away with the “distinct” feeling that life is a “cruel and meaningless” joke?

Well “fret” no longer, there is “hope.” The research team at “Facebook” has discovered the reason for your “bi-polar” malady “Emotional Contagion.”

The National Academy of Sciences in “conjunction” with Facebook investigators has determined that your “emotions” are being “manipulated” by shadowy forces just waiting to “pounce” on you and “ruin” your day.

Facebook conducted a massive “psychological” experiment on 689,003 users, manipulating their “news” feeds to assess the “effects” on their emotions.

The details of the experiment were published in an article entitled “Experimental Evidence Of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion Through Social Networks” published in the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.”

The short version is, Facebook has the ability to make you feel good or bad, just by “tweaking” what shows up in your “news” feed.

The experiment tested whether “emotional contagion” occurs between individuals on Facebook, a question the authors (a Facebook scientist and two academics) tested by using an “automated system” to reduce the amount of “emotional” content in Facebook “news” feeds.

The authors found that when they “manipulated” user timelines to reduce “positive” expressions displayed by others “people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred.”

The results suggest that “emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive-scale contagion via social networks.”

For a long time research on “emotional contagion” was premised on the need for in-person and nonverbal cues, this experiment suggests “in-person interaction and nonverbal cues are not strictly necessary for emotional contagion, and that the observation of others’ positive experiences constitutes a positive experience for people.”

The study has “troubling” implications for Facebook’s ability to “manipulate” the user experience for a “variety of ends” suggesting that what a user “agrees to” in the Data Use Policy is critically important.

The authors were able to conduct the research because in their words, automated testing “was consistent with Facebook’s Data Use Policy, to which all users agree prior to creating an account on Facebook, constituting informed consent for this research.”

What “harm” might flow from manipulating user “timelines” to create emotions? Well, consider the “controversial” study published last year (not by Facebook researchers) that said companies should “tailor” their marketing to women based on “how they felt” about their appearance.

That marketing study began by examining the “days and times” when women felt the “worst” about themselves, finding that women felt most “vulnerable” on Mondays and felt the “best” about themselves on Thursdays.

The marketing study suggested companies should “concentrate media during prime vulnerability moments, aligning with content involving tips and tricks, instant beauty rescues, dressing for the success, getting organized for the week and empowering stories… Concentrate media during her most beautiful moments, aligning with content involving weekend guides, weekend style, beauty tips for social activities and positive stories.”

The Facebook study, combined with last year’s marketing study suggests that marketers may not “need to wait” until Mondays or Thursdays to have an “emotional” impact, instead social media companies may be able to manipulate “timelines and news feeds” to create “emotionally fueled” marketing opportunities.

How did Facebook manipulate “news” feeds to create “emotional contagion?”

They relied on an automated system that identified “positive or negative” words based on an electronic dictionary. They then reduced the “positive” content in some users news feeds, finding that when the positive content was “reduced”, a larger percentage of “words” in people’s status updates were “negative” and a smaller “percentage” were positive. When “negativity” was reduced, the “opposite” pattern occurred.

The authors found, “these results suggest that the emotions expressed by friends, via online social networks, influence our own moods, constituting, to our knowledge, the first experimental evidence for massive-scale emotional contagion via social networks and providing support for previously contested claims that emotions spread via contagion through a network.”

The massive research effort, undertaken in January of 2012, shows just how the “fiendish” scheme is deployed by those “evil manipulators” of society. Read this summary at your “peril” for the science is “now” complete!

You are in fact, a “brainless” wondering lamb, subject to the “thoughts and emotions” of nameless, faceless “forces” lurking all about us.

Facebook Scientist Who Secretly Manipulated People’s Emotions: My Bad