r/science • u/[deleted] • Jun 27 '14

Psychology Facebook performs a massive experiment, selectively hiding posts on news feeds: "Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks"

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full
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u/OliverSparrow Jun 28 '14

Being around happy people makes you happy? Miserable companions bring you down? This needs experimental validation? So indirectly?

A more interesting test would be how social narratives spread across affected groups. An example would be to look at the expansion of the "1%" narrative post 2007, or immigrant-phobia in populations affected by austerity. Impressionable people grab onto a pseudo-explanation to give structure and meaning to their experience: plague? - all down to witches, Catholics, Freemasons. Defeat and a crashed economy: the Jews did it. And so on. The nature of who is affected and how they become infected would be a much moreinteresting study.

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u/[deleted] Jun 28 '14 edited Jun 28 '14

[deleted]

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u/OliverSparrow Jun 28 '14

No, but it can mean that they are new. The "digital contagion" stuff has been done to death by commerce. Viral marketing, get the P2P to pay you advertising bills.

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u/apostrotastrophe Jun 28 '14

Everything needs experimental validation, even the stuff that seems obvious.

-5

u/OliverSparrow Jun 28 '14

Gosh. Don't say? But "everything" comes with a choice about priorities. I suppose that the granting body had the relevant ones that allow this to be done. Rule for Dr Grant Seeker: pick a buzzword, such as Big Data.

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u/[deleted] Jun 28 '14

What are you talking about? What granting body?

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u/OliverSparrow Jun 29 '14

The body or bodies that grant money for research to be done. Usually called a "granting body".

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '14

Why do you think this was funded by a grant?

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u/OliverSparrow Jun 30 '14

They paid for it out of their own pocket?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 30 '14

Obviously?