How Does Emotion Spread Online?

A study by researchers at the Beihang University in China has found that certain emotions are more likely to go viral than others. While joy is more easily to propagate than sadness or disgust, it was far outstripped by one of the most negative emotions of all – rage.

The study operated by tracking the number and diverse use of certain emoticons in online messages, which betrayed the emotions of the user. Their findings were conclusive: rage is all-consuming and spreads like wildfire.

If you are a regular user of social media, you will have witnessed first-hand how quickly an emotion can spread from one person to another. Sadness, though often powerful on an individual basis, is intrinsically demotivating. Therefore, it does not encourage people to pass on the feeling in the same manner that anger does.

Anger Breeds Anger

Anger is a motivator; people often feel that their rights or their moral boundaries are being impinged upon by something someone else has done or said. Therefore, in order to assert their own viewpoint, they feel it necessary to challenge the said action or affirmation. More than that, however, they feel the need to rally others to their cause.

This craving for a sense of belonging is one of the underlying principles which motivates people to share their outrage in a public setting, and encourage others to feel similarly inflamed. The contagiousness of anger prompts people to take more action than they would with more positive emotions – a fact which can be manipulated by individuals, corporations and governments.

Politicians have long had a reputation for attempting to deflect criticism by heaping outrage onto others, while corporations can use similar tactics to distract from immoral or unreasonable practices. Meanwhile, individuals such as Katie Hopkins have made an entire career out of generating controversy and negative publicity.

Studies Tallies with American Research

The findings from the Chinese study tally with those reached by Jonah Berger of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Berger came to his conclusions by investigating some 7,000 articles which appeared in the New York Times to determine which received the most email responses. He found that those which provoked outrage were among the most widely responded to.

This spells bad news for global health, after research from the Harvard School of Public Health linked anger with an increased risk of heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular anomalies. Certain cardiac events were believed to be almost 5% more likely when someone’s passions were inflamed in the form of outrage.

The silver lining to these findings is that Berger’s study found one emotion to be more susceptible to quick dissemination than anger – that of awe. So the next time you feel overwhelmed with anger, do your heart a favour and look at a picture of some Californian Redwoods, an image of our solar system or a pair of kittens inside a barrel… whatever inspires awe in you, personally.