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Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)

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Re: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)

#41

Post by kerkeslager »

clairity wrote: post #38
kerkeslager wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguing this at the level of "What should individuals do?" makes no sense, because we have little-to-no data on how effective masks or social distancing are at that level. We're really at the infancy stages of understanding this virus--keep in mind up until a few weeks ago we thought spread from high traffic surfaces was a major transmission vector. At the level of "What should government recommend?"--that's a fundam…

no, the point is that lockdowns, being basically a superset of distancing, don't add enough protection/reduction on top of distancing for it's enormous cost.

I understood that as your point the first time.

And I'm saying, if you don't lock down, distancing doesn't happen.

It's more complex than just that, but that's the gist.

Re: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)

#42

Post by stx »

jonahss wrote: post #35

Are studies of this sort still being done, perhaps privately at Fb or other social networks? This study was unethical, and revealed something very scary about the potential of social networking, but I haven't heard much since then. Did they stop all research into social behavior, find ethical ways to do it, or just stop publishing publicly?

>Are studies of this sort still being done, perhaps privately at Fb or other social networks?

According to my facebook feed they said no, they don't do anything unethical. To be serious though this is pretty scary. The power these companies have to manipulate society is not understood by much of society.

Re: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)

#43

Post by asdgfinionio »

tathougies wrote: post #3

This is insanity. How did this study pass an ethics council? They admit to exposing people to negative emotional cues at random? Their N is 689K. At this point, they are certainly responsible for some number of suicides. The authors should be ashamed of themselves. Their salary is being paid by manipulating people's emotions on purpose. Something is wrong with that.

>They admit to exposing people to negative emotional cues at random?

I'm not sure the "negative" part matters. Manipulating someone's information in any way is irresponsible. A message intended to be uplifting can be harmful, say if someone is in a manic state or is unable to relate to the positive message. In politics, I think we all know the dangers of burying bad news.

Making people sad is more obviously evil than making people happy, but Facebook has no business trying to do either.

>At this point, they are certainly responsible for some number of suicides.

I doubt that. The effect size was small (~2% change in frequency of emotional words), and it seems dubious to me that the frequency of positive and negative words actually reflects someone's emotional state.

But failure isn't an excuse. Trying to hurt people isn't OK just because you aren't very good at it.

Re: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)

#44

Post by titzer »

asdgfinionio wrote: post #43
tathougies wrote: post #3

This is insanity. How did this study pass an ethics council? They admit to exposing people to negative emotional cues at random? Their N is 689K. At this point, they are certainly responsible for some number of suicides. The authors should be ashamed of themselves. Their salary is being paid by manipulating people's emotions on purpose. Something is wrong with that.

>They admit to exposing people to negative emotional cues at random? I'm not sure the "negative" part matters. Manipulating someone's information in any way is irresponsible. A message intended to be uplifting can be harmful, say if someone is in a manic state or is unable to relate to the positive message. In politics, I think we all know the dangers of burying bad news. Making people sad is more obviously evil than…

> Manipulating someone's information in any way is irresponsible.

I agree. But what about advertising, filter bubbles, curated feeds, aggregators? Is it OK if done algorithmically to make more money?

Re: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)

#45

Post by 082349872349872 »

hirundo wrote: post #15

Here's a simple mechanism for emotional contagion: 1. Mirroring is the behavior in which one person unconsciously imitates the gesture, speech pattern, or attitude of another. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirroring 2. The facial feedback hypotheisis is that one's facial expression directly effects their emotional experience -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_feedback_hypothesis So you subconsciously imitate…

see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuleshov_effect

Re: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)

#46

Post by zwirbl »

082349872349872 wrote: post #45
hirundo wrote: post #15

Here's a simple mechanism for emotional contagion: 1. Mirroring is the behavior in which one person unconsciously imitates the gesture, speech pattern, or attitude of another. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirroring 2. The facial feedback hypotheisis is that one's facial expression directly effects their emotional experience -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_feedback_hypothesis So you subconsciously imitate…

see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuleshov_effect

Thank you for this link! I haven't heard about this particular effect before, but it shows the importance of context very well I think

Re: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)

#47

Post by iateanapple »

kerkeslager wrote: post #41
clairity wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, the point is that lockdowns, being basically a superset of distancing, don't add enough protection/reduction on top of distancing for it's enormous cost.

I understood that as your point the first time. And I'm saying, if you don't lock down, distancing doesn't happen. It's more complex than just that, but that's the gist.

> And I'm saying, if you don't lock down, distancing doesn't happen.

First - our lockdowns were mostly unenforced (except against businesses).

Bars were closed but house parties raged.

Second - Sweden didn’t do lockdowns and yet people did practice social distancing.

Re: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)

#48

Post by iateanapple »

titzer wrote: post #24
clairity wrote: post #17

> "It's just that the faster mirroring, feedback and propagation of digits over atoms are generating waves rather than ripples. Beware of tsunamis." that's how the hysteria concerning corona has crashed all over our economy and social infrastructure. as in, lockdowns won't stop the virus and they're immaterially better than distancing (with masks for when you can't), but the economic and social costs (including the p…

> as in, lockdowns won't stop the virus I wish we could be done with this absolutely false misinformation. Case in point, New Zealand is COVID free.

> Case in point, New Zealand is COVID free.

Unlike NZ, the US can’t control its borders - as decades of uncontrolled illegal immigration has shown us.

Re: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)

#49

Post by acd »

I think AI recommendations algorithms are too unregulated. Say a person is having or had for example a depression. Recommendation algorithms for advertising tech wants customer to stay on site and view content to sell advertising. So potentially recommendations algorithms could recommend videos or content that transfers depressed or other emotional states to viewers as long as it generates ad revenue. Depending on what the algorithms senses what others in the same emotional state are viewing. What is the legal liability For transfer these emotions for companies providing these platforms?

On the other side the platform could transfer positive emotions. The issue I see is that we have unregulated emotional and potentially addiction transfers directly to consumers brains. What I mean for cigarettes there is warning here there is nothing but the product is probably as addictive minus health effects.

Re: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion thru social networks (2014)

#50

Post by 908087 »

stx wrote: post #42
jonahss wrote: post #35

Are studies of this sort still being done, perhaps privately at Fb or other social networks? This study was unethical, and revealed something very scary about the potential of social networking, but I haven't heard much since then. Did they stop all research into social behavior, find ethical ways to do it, or just stop publishing publicly?

>Are studies of this sort still being done, perhaps privately at Fb or other social networks? According to my facebook feed they said no, they don't do anything unethical. To be serious though this is pretty scary. The power these companies have to manipulate society is not understood by much of society.

Very few understand it, but all are currently living with the consequences of it, particularly in the US.
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