PSY 301 Chapter Notes - Chapter Extra: Emotional Contagion, Linguistic Inquiry
Document Summary
Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks. Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion. This allows people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. The study wanted to find if this can happen without in-person interaction. When positive expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts. When negative expressions were reduced, people produced more positive posts and fewer negative posts. Emotional contagion occurs via text-based computer-mediated communication. Contagion of psychological and physiological qualities has been suggested based on correlational data for social networks generally. People"s emotional expressions on facebook predict friends" emotional expressions, even days later. 689,003 people were exposed to emotional expression in their news feeds. Half had positive exposure, half had negative exposure. Posts were determined to be positive or negative based on if they contained one positive or negative word. Defined by linguistic inquiry and word count software. The experiment took place for one week.
