Quantified Emotions
Plotting Human Emotions on Graph
Information Dissemination and beyond!
Okay! I agree it’s pure nerdy sh*t. But I can’t help it. It’s an amalgamation of two of my favorite domains: human behavior and visual representation of emotions (Quantifying Emotions). In this experiment, I will be focusing on the reaction of a person to a professional news and visual representation will be in graphical form.
Information Dissemination
Dissemination derives its meaning from the traditional communication process. But in its formal form, dissemination only accounts for the steps where information is sent out and received, but it records no feedback. While, for the sake of this experiment and understanding human behavior, I am recording the feedback (reaction) of the receiver.
The Experiment
Objective: Observing the reaction of the (human) subject to a particular piece of information and enhancing their happiness.
Subject(s): Freelance writers being mentored by the experimenter (a. k. a. me) — Only those freelancers were selected, who were on a friendly term with the nerd.
Context: Freelancers are awaiting results of their submitted articles.
Experiment: Results came out, and the articles got selected. But instead of telling them their article has been selected, they were told it has been rejected (a harmless lie), and their reaction was recorded. Later they were told that the article has been accepted.
Results: When the freelancers were first told that their article has been rejected, they were disheartened. Reflected by a fall in the level of happiness (zone of sadness). Later, when they were told that their article is accepted, their sadness quickly transformed into happiness.
Furthermore, it was observed that the happiness which followed sadness was more than the happiness that’s acquired in a non-experimental scenario (without the harmless lie). Depicted by the formula below:
X = Y + Z
X= Happiness followed by a phase of sadness.
Y= Happiness after a normal state of mind.
Z= Sadness followed by a normal state of mind.
Conclusion: The experiments backs the idea that bad news followed by good news leaves the receiver on a high note.
This explains why people, when given the choice of choosing between good news and bad news, want to listen to the bad news first.
Limitation: During one of the experiments, the ‘subject’ rather took it personally for being used as a subject without her consent. The plotline of happiness, more or less, followed a similar trend.
But her attitude towards the experimenter saw some fluctuations. The annoyance elevated to a ‘not talking to you’ level. Although, the subject, being a rational person, accepted the apologies and settled her grievances.
Recommendations:
- Choose your subjects wisely.
- Don’t stretch it for too long.
- The lie should be harmless.
- Make sure the person is open enough (with you) to share their genuine feelings.
