An Unfortunate Truth: Misery Loves Company
When a cultural tragedy occurs, the social media backlash can become overwhelming. While social media is often used as a force for good, the abundance of online rage can sometimes be impossible to avoid.
New research from The University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine suggests that negative Facebook rants may be contagious. This “Emotional Contagion”, otherwise known as the spread of emotional states, is capable of occurring on your Facebook feed, as well as in everyday life.
It’s no joke that the UK is famous for it’s gloomy weather. While grim weather can put you into a grim mood, simply reading a rant about the rain can have an equally devastating impact on your mood. When the emotional content of one billion Facebook posts were examined, rainy negativity on social platforms was found to spread across the world to sunny areas. Negativity had a domino effect.
“For every one person affected directly, rainfall alters the emotional expression of about one to two other people, suggesting that online social networks may magnify the intensity of global emotional synchrony.” (Detecting emotional contagion in massive social networks, Covielllo et al, 2014)
So where’s the silver lining in all this?
Well just as negative emotions are contagious, so are positive ones. Hurray! Findings show that just overhearing a positive message has the power to put us in a good mood. Even better, the positive effect is stronger than the negative effect.
“Intriguingly, although rain is the impetus for this contagion, positive messages appear to be more contagious than negative.” (Detecting emotional contagion in massive social networks, Covielllo et al, 2014)
So next time you find your social network is drowning in negativity, causing you to silently scream into your pillow; stop, and watch this.
