Facebook Emotions Are Contagious, and You Just Might Be Bringing Your Friends Down

By Dennis Romero Wed., Feb. 1 2012 at 6:03 AM

BeFitt

You know that Debbie Downer friend on Facebook who posts each day about being unable to sleep well, stand the pain or, worse, find true love?

Oy vey. Turns out she's bringing everybody down with her.

New research presented in Southern California recently concludes that "emotional contagion" can go beyond face-to-face communication:

It can be transmitted through social media. And it can bum you out.

Research presented by psychologist Adam Kramer and others to the 13th Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in San Diego over the weekend indicated, according to the organization, that ...

... Facebook users can spread emotions to their online connections just by posting a written message, or status update, that's positive or negative ...

According to ScienceNews, here's how the study went down, in part:

Kramer used a computer program to identify words signifying positive and negative emotions in Facebook status updates posted by 1 million English-speaking users over three consecutive days in 2010. He did the same for status updates posted by friends of those Facebook users over the next three consecutive days.
... When a user's status update included more positive than negative words, updates by that user's friends posted three days later included an average of 7 percent more positive words and 1 percent fewer negative words compared with their updates just before the user's post appeared. A corresponding pattern appeared after users posted updates with a surplus of negative words.

This is amazing. We might be able to solve this lagging economy by simply posting pro-shopping sentiments on Facebook. Buying stuff makes America happy. Yay.

So turn that frown upside down. Or, at the least, hide your pain. For the good of the country. And your friends.

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

Tags:

contagion, Debbie Downer, emotion, Facebook, psychology, social media, study

We Recommend

Alvinbrown

My cö-wörkër's stëp-âünt mâkës $44 ân höür ön thë lâptöp. Shë hâs bëën firëd för 6 mönths büt lâst mönth hër pây wâs $1760 jüst wörking ön thë lâptöp för â fëw höürs. Hërë's thë sitë tö rëâd mörë.... LazyCash10.com

Jerin Haynes

Nice, Dennis. I'm going to start posting smileys randomly for a week just to see what happens. :-) Keep up the goods!

ZongPooo

Man that jsut looks like its gonna be cool. WOw.Total-Privacy dot US

ZongPooo

Dude knows he is totally rocking it, that just looks like its gonna be goodAnonyWeb.tk

Tee Jones

Here at my computer, it is a dark and stormy night in SoCal. EVERYONE I know has died of a drug overdose at an impossibly young age or they're listening to Skrillex, and died at an impossibly young age while, again, also doing drugs. Last night, I secretly poisoned our family dog, Doris, because of her incessant drooling everywhere, upon everything. Just in: several more of my friends have died in a tragic and untimely car accident AND a drug overdose, simultaneously. I just can't stand my life anymore!!The internet is the only place I can turn for a cheap and therefore affordable form of therapy and your article, DENNIS ROMERO, I can only describe as a lonely and depressing beacon in the dark stormy night surrounding my computer. I shall humbly consider it like a lamp unto wisdom, and I, the desultory neophyte of your articulated enlightenment.Thank you, Thank you, XXOO

Jeff

Apparently Matt is blind, or at the very least very tone def.

matthewdavidwilder

Wow, the L.A. Weekly is awesome. Telling people "stop acting depressed!" and the Bush-derived "solve our problems by going shopping!" You can tell this is a paper owned by a "libertarian"!