For one week in 2012 the emotional content of Newsfeeds
from 689,003 Facebook users was manipulated; by reducing the number of positive
expressions, or the number negative expressions. The findings were reported in
PNAS http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.short?rss=1&ssource=mfr
The publication resulted in a huge outcry about the
ethics of Facebook manipulating Newsfeeds in this way - see here and here and comments posted directly to PNAS, as to whether Facebook users actually give 'informed' consent for this kind of experiment and what the consequences for individuals could be. It is a debate worth having. However it seems that it was at the expense of a critical look at the authors ( A.D. Kramer, J.E. Guillory, and J.T. Hancock) claim about 'emotional contagion on a massive scale'. From the perspective of someone interested in social learning at a distance using computer mediated communication the article missed some key points about the emotional experience of 'written' interpersonal interaction . So I wrote a letter to PNAS but it will not be published (yes it was rejected). Neverthess here it is.
The outcome of the manipulation was as follows; a reduction of positive expressions produced fewer
positive posts and more negative posts with the opposite pattern occurring when
negative expressions were manipulated. The authors claim that these findings
show that emotional contagion can be elicited in the absence of nonverbal cues
and that given the link between emotion and well being the finding could be
important for public health. There are implications in another domain,
education, specifically for social learning online. In higher education an increasing number of
universities and MOOC platforms are providing facilities for students to
communicate with each other remotely using social media, e.g. text based
forums. The opportunity for students
to ‘learn by discussion’, to collaborate
with each other on a shared task, ‘learning by collaboration’, are extremely
effective ways of achieving depth of understanding (3) and also equip students for the
teamwork skills required by modern organizations. However, the emotional
valence of the experience is an important factor. Reports that social interaction online is
less satisfactory and experientially ‘uncanny’ (1,4) is why the findings of (2) are
relevant. Interpersonal interaction
defines social learning however (2) claim that for their study
contagion and social interaction are disentangled.
Two constructs are challenged: the conceptualization of
emotional contagion and mimicry, assumptions about ‘direct interaction’. A
taxonomy, on which to base the definitional nuance of the emotional experience
that results when others share one’s emotional experience: mimicry, contagion,
personal distress, affective empathy, cognition empathy, sympathy, and the
criteria that distinguish each, has been formulated (5). Mimicry and emotional contagion
are both characterized by affective
behavior while emotional contagion involves affective experience and isomorphism. Although affective behavior was elicited the authors (based on the
cross-emotional encouragement effect) concluded that mimicry, as an
explanation, was not sufficient. However claiming contagion is not substantiated;
they do not have any data to confirm that affective
experience and affective isomorphy
occurred.
That ‘emotional
contagion occurs without direct interaction’ is the significance claim.
However, conceptually ‘direct interaction’ is underdeveloped. ‘Direct interaction’, as when individuals meet
face-to-face, involves two shared aspects, time frame and place. Asynchronous
interaction means conversational turns may be disrupted and response is usually
delayed, while interacting in an online space means that multisensory
information is not available and real time context is not shared. The
specification of all these factors is crucial when evaluating emotion
communicated online through writing. For
Facebook, a written communication from ‘friends’ will sometimes results in ‘friends’ moderating their responses (the
data that the authors collected). That
is the essence of human communication: the use of written language and
metacognition. The usefulness of the study lies in the foregrounding the power
of language. However, the value of this approach, theoretical and practical,
will depend on substantial integration with research in two fields, emotion and
computer mediated communication.
(1)
BAYNE, S. (2008) Uncanny spaces for higher education: Teaching and
learning in virtual worlds. ALT-J Research in Learning Technology, 16, 197-205.
(2) KRAMER, A. D. I., GUILLORY, J. E. &
HANCOCK, J. T. (2014) Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional
contagion through social networks. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 111, 8788-8790.
(3) LAURILLARD, D. (2012) Teaching as a design science. Building
pedagogical patterns for learning and technology., New York, London,
Routledge.
(4) ROBINSON, K. (2013) The interrelationship
of emotion and cognition when students undertake collaborative group work
online: An interdiscplinary approach. Computers
& Education, 62, 298-307.
(5) WALTER, H. (2011) Social Cognitive
Neuroscience of Empathy: Concepts, Circuits and Genes. Emotion Review, 4, 9-23.
