Human emotions are contagious on social networks

A paper published by Facebook's data scientists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows the human mood is contagious on social networks, but it has also sparked a lot of controversy as the experiment involves tampering with news feeds without the knowledge of the user.

The experiment, led by Facebook's data scientist Adam Kramer, aims to study how social networks (both positive and negative) affect transmission, and ultimately concludes that "face-to-face interaction and nonverbal cues are not absolute conditions for emotional contagion." ”

To verify the hypothesis, the researchers selected 689,003 Facebook users and then divided them into two groups, removing negative emotions from one group of users and rejecting another group of users with positive emotions. The trial lasted one week, between January 11, 2012 and January 18. The results show that when users see a few positive posts in a friend's mood, the positive posts they post become smaller and the negative posts increase;

This suggests that the user's mood on the social network is contagious and that a negative view of a post that sees the positive of a friend is reversed. The study also shows that social networks can add some positive energy to dynamic messages in order to make users feel better.

But since tampering with dynamic messages took place without the user's knowledge, Facebook's research was revealed to have sparked controversy. But according to user-signed data-use policies, Facebook does not require users to sign a separate form before experimenting. Adam Kramer also published a post on Facebook that she said could serve as an official statement, explaining it. She said the study was designed to explore the emotional impact of Facebook and its users in order to improve services. The study involved only 0.04% users for a week, and even though the dynamic message was tampered with, the user's post was visible in timeline or reloading the dynamic message. But while the goal is to improve Facebook's services, it may not prove to be a legitimate cause of anxiety.