Facebook Ran A Huge Psychological Experiment On 689,003 Users

[jimmy olsen]

What the fuck?

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-study-emotional-states-transfer-2014-6#ixzz3620I2Y5p

Facebook Ran A Huge Psychological Experiment On Users And Manipulated The Emotions Of More Than 600,000 People

    Jillian D'Onfro

    Jun. 28, 2014, 12:58 PM

Facebook's data scientists conducted a massive experiment where it messed with people's feeds and proved that longer-lasting moods, like happiness or depression, can be transferred across the social network.

The company tweaked the Newsfeed algorithms of 689,003 unwitting Facebook users, so that people were seeing an abnormally low number of either positive or negative posts.

In a recently published study, the scientists say they found that when people saw fewer positive posts on their feeds, they produced fewer positive posts and instead wrote more negative posts. On the flip side, when scientists reduced the number of negative posts on a person's newsfeed, those individuals became more positive themselves.

"Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness," study authors Adam Kramer, Jamie Guillory, and Jeffrey Hancock write. "We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues."

This idea is interesting in and of itself, but the AV Club's William Hughes also points out that the study highlights something that most users probably don't think about: By agreeing to the Facebook's Data Use Policy when you sign up, you're automatically giving it permission to include you in big psychological experiments like this, without your knowledge.

[alfred russel]

Facebook must have been singled out Tyr and Ide to see only the most negative stories on their feeds. It makes sense now.

[Darth Wagtaros]

They and Habsy.

[Grallon]

 Daybreak is upon us!



G.

[garbon]

I don't know how I feel about this.

[Josquius]

Pretty creepy.
Sure they probably used an algorithm to pick out negative and positive words and didn't actually go around reading people's messages, and its obvious they do have the power to do that if they want, but still...

[Ideologue]

Facebook must have been singled out Tyr and Ide to see only the most negative stories on their feeds. It makes sense now.

I'm barely on it, but I'm glad to know that I can ruin other people's days.  I have that power.

[Maximus]

What the fuck?

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-study-emotional-states-transfer-2014-6#ixzz3620I2Y5p

Why are you surprised? This is what Facebook is for.

[garbon]

What the fuck?

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-study-emotional-states-transfer-2014-6#ixzz3620I2Y5p

Why are you surprised? This is what Facebook is for.

Pretty sure that facebook wasn't created with the intention of running psych experiments.

[garbon]

Facebook must have been singled out Tyr and Ide to see only the most negative stories on their feeds. It makes sense now.

I'm barely on it, but I'm glad to know that I can ruin other people's days.  I have that power.

There was an article not that long ago on teen depression saying that teens can get depressed/more depressed when on social media and they see all their friends posting positive/cool things. They compare to their own lives and then feel sadder - forgetting that people are not often posting about boring/non-fun bits.

Of course, that kind of seems like the opposite of the results of this "experiment".

[Ideologue]

Yeah, other than attention whores in their death spirals, who post negative crybaby things all the time, the usual Facebook update seems more like "LOOK AT THIS AWESOME THING I DID (that probably wasn't that awesome)" or "LOOK AT THIS AWESOME PLACE I WENT TO (that probably also was not that awesome)."  But I don't use it that much.

It's weird how friendship became a war of all against all for status.  Was it always like that and we just didn't notice as kids?  Is a "positive attitude" actually just stealth bragging?

[Admiral Yi]

Constant one-upmanship and the desire to turn a conversation back to oneself is behavior I associate with puberty and one I find ridiculous and jarring in an adult.  But it certainly exists.

[The Brain]

Facebook must have been singled out Tyr and Ide to see only the most negative stories on their feeds. It makes sense now.

I'm barely on it, but I'm glad to know that I can ruin other people's days.  I have that power.

There was an article not that long ago on teen depression saying that teens can get depressed/more depressed when on social media and they see all their friends posting positive/cool things. They compare to their own lives and then feel sadder - forgetting that people are not often posting about boring/non-fun bits.

I'm doing my part. In the Everyday Adventures thread.

[Eddie Teach]

Pretty sure that facebook wasn't created with the intention of running psych experiments.

It was created so Harvard students wouldn't have to mix with proles.

[garbon]

Pretty sure that facebook wasn't created with the intention of running psych experiments.

It was created so Harvard students wouldn't have to mix with proles.

Clearly it wasn't that or it wouldn't have expanded like it did.