Facebook Feelings Are Contagious (and Not Necessarily How You'd Think)

by Anna Maltby

OK, maybe we need to get some new Facebook friends, but when we think about people expressing emotions on social media, what immediately comes to mind is, simply, whining. You know, negative Nancies complaining about the weather, their lukewarm coffee, little Timmy having an "accident" and anything you could ever possibly groan about. And doesn't it kind of seem like that stuff gets in your head and makes you want to bitch, too?

Turns out, that's totally a thing: Just as emotions can be contagious in real life (ever get upset when a friend cries, or find yourself grinning when a stranger smiles?), they spread on Facebook, too, according to a new study published in the journal PLOS One.

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Researchers wanted to see what happened when an independent, emotion-triggering variable popped up in the world, so they tracked negative and positive emotions expressed in Facebook statuses in cities where it was raining. No huge surprise, but they found that when someone posted a whiny weather status, it actually led to additional negative statuses among their social network, even when their buds lived in cities where it wasn't raining.

But here's the really cool, and kind of warm-fuzzy, thing -- as contagious as negativity was online, positivity was even more contagious. That's right: every time someone posted something happy, it caused a higher number of happy posts than the number of sad posts stemming from other sad posts. (No word on what kind of happy stuff those crazy kids were posting about the rain. "Love my Hunter boots," maybe?)

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"People tend to cut ties to friends who are downers, and Facebook as a platform tends to enable the spread of positive messages. For example, there is only a 'like' button, not a 'dislike' button," study author James Fowler, Professor of Medical Genetics and Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, told SELF.

Think about that next time you're tempted to get all #FirstWorldProblems.

"Each of us should realize our 'network power' when we are deciding what to do since we potentially influence dozens of other people," Fowler says. "I personally believe that if you tell someone they don't influence anyone, they won't take nearly as much responsibility for their own actions as they do when you tell them they influence many other people."

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