Study of over one billion status updates finds that positive emotions are more contagious than negative.
Emotions expressed online — both positive and negative — are contagious, concludes a new study from the University of California, San Diego and Yale University (Coviello et al., 2014).
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The authors of the study conclude:
“These results imply that emotions themselves might ripple through social networks to generate large-scale synchrony that gives rise to clusters of happy and unhappy individuals.
And new technologies online may be increasing this synchrony by giving people more avenues to express themselves to a wider range of social contacts.
As a result, we may see greater spikes in global emotion that could generate increased volatility in everything from political systems to financial markets.”
So, the next time you’re about to post a social network update, pause and think about the effect it will have on others.
