Emotional on FB? The feeling's mutual

Emotional on FB? The feeling's mutual

Emotions can spread between users of social network sites, U.S. media reported.San Jose Mercury News said that emotions have long been known to be contagious and social media were a new means of transmission, citing the research by Facebook data scientist Adam Kramer.

Kramer studied about 1 million English speakers and their friends in different countries on the social network service and concluded that the words people use in their status updates function as a driver of emotions affecting their Facebook friends.

Kramer discovered that people who used emotionally loaded words like happy, hug, sick, and vile in their status updates evoked similar emotions in the postings by their friends.

Kramers analysis is not just an academic study about Facebook but also an investigation into Facebooks fast-growing social products and advertising.

Kramers study on emotional contagion was presented at the 2011 annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

Source: The Korean Herald/ANN
Published June 7 2011