Facebook Emotional Contagion Study Raises Concerns

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Close-up of hand holding smartphone showing social media apps like Facebook and Instagram.
Credit: pexels.com, Close-up of hand holding smartphone showing social media apps like Facebook and Instagram.

Facebook's emotional contagion study raised concerns about the company's manipulation of users' emotions through their news feed. The study, published in 2014, used algorithms to randomly display either positive or negative posts to a sample of over 689,000 Facebook users.

Researchers found that users who saw more negative posts were more likely to post negative content themselves. The study's findings suggested that Facebook's algorithms can have a profound impact on users' emotional states.

The study's lead researcher, Adam D. I. Kramer, admitted that the study was designed to manipulate users' emotions, which sparked concerns about Facebook's responsibility to its users.

Facebook Manipulated 689,000 Users

Facebook manipulated the news feeds of 689,000 users to study emotional contagion, which is the spread of emotions from one person to another.

The study used a technique called "emotional contagion" to see if exposing users to more positive or negative posts would affect their own emotions.

Researchers found that when people saw more positive posts, they were more likely to post something positive themselves.

Credit: youtube.com, CNET Update - The ethical problem with Facebook's emotional experiment

On the other hand, when people saw more negative posts, they were more likely to post something negative.

The study was conducted without users' knowledge or consent, which has raised concerns about Facebook's ethics.

Facebook has since changed its policy to require researchers to get users' consent before conducting similar studies.

Facebook News Feed Experiment

Facebook conducted a news feed experiment in 2012, where they manipulated the content of nearly 700,000 users' news feeds to see how it would affect their emotions.

The experiment involved reducing the number of positive posts in users' news feeds and increasing the number of negative posts. This was done to see how it would affect users' emotional states.

The study found that users whose news feeds had fewer positive posts were more likely to post negative content themselves. This was a concerning finding, as it suggested that Facebook was inadvertently creating a negative feedback loop.

Facebook's experiment was designed to last for one week, but it ended up lasting for six days due to user complaints.

Very Sorry

Credit: youtube.com, Facebook's Emotional Contagion Experiments

The Facebook emotional contagion study's findings were a wake-up call for many users. Users who saw fewer negative stories in their news feed were less likely to write a negative post.

Adam Kramer, a Facebook co-author, felt it was essential to investigate the concern that seeing friends' positive content leads to feeling negative or left out.

However, Kramer admitted that Facebook didn't clearly state their motivations in the paper.

The study's results sparked anxiety in some people, and Kramer and his co-authors apologized for how the paper described the research.

Viola Morissette

Assigning Editor

Viola Morissette is a seasoned Assigning Editor with a passion for curating high-quality content. With a keen eye for detail and a knack for identifying emerging trends, she has successfully guided numerous articles to publication. Her expertise spans a wide range of topics, including technology and software tutorials, such as her work on "OneDrive Tutorials," where she expertly assigned and edited pieces that have resonated with readers worldwide.

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