![\"emotion](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2014\/06\/emotion-1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nEmotional Contagion<\/a> is the idea that emotions spread throughout networks. If you are around happy people, you are more likely to be happy. If you are around gloomy people, you are likely to be glum.<\/p>\n The data scientists at Facebook set out to learn if text-based, nonverbal\/non-face-to-face interactions had similar effects. \u00a0They asked: Do emotions remain contagious within digitally mediated settings? They worked to answer this question experimentally by manipulating the emotional tenor of users\u2019 News Feeds, and recording the results.<\/p>\n Public reaction was such that many expressed dismay<\/a> that Facebook would 1) collect their data without asking and 2) manipulate their emotions.<\/p>\n I\u2019m going to leave aside the ethics of Facebook\u2019s data collection. It hits on an important but blurry issue of informed consent in light of Terms of Use agreements, and deserves a post all its own. Instead, I focus on the emotional manipulation, arguing that Facebook was already manipulating your emotions, and likely in ways far more effectual than algorithmically altering the emotional tenor of your News Feed. <\/strong><\/p>\n Here is there full report.<\/a> And here is the abstract:<\/p>\n Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. Emotional contagion is well established in laboratory experiments, with people transferring positive and negative emotions to others. Data from a large real-world social network, collected over a 20-y period suggests that longer-lasting moods (e.g., depression, happiness) can be transferred through networks [Fowler JH, Christakis NA (2008)\u00a0BMJ<\/em>\u00a0337:a2338], although the results are controversial. In an experiment with people who use Facebook, we test whether emotional contagion occurs outside of in-person interaction between individuals by reducing the amount of emotional content in the News Feed. When positive expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred. These results indicate that emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive-scale contagion via social networks. This work also suggests that, in contrast to prevailing assumptions, in-person interaction and nonverbal cues are not strictly necessary for emotional contagion, and that the observation of others\u2019 positive experiences constitutes a positive experience for people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In brief, Facebook made either negative or positive emotions more prevalent in users\u2019 News Feeds, and measured how this affected users\u2019 emotionally expressive behaviors, as indicated by users\u2019 own posts. In line with Emotional Contagion Theory, and in contrast to \u201ctechnology disconnects us and makes us sad through comparison<\/a>\u201d hypotheses, they found that indeed, those exposed to happier content expressed higher rates of positive emotion, while those exposed to sadder content expressed higher rates of negative emotion.<\/p>\n Looking at the data, there are three points of particular interest:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n