One funny TV commercial shows a person having a “bad day” and how his mood is passed on to others, creating a whole chain of upset people. Such emotional "contamination" is quite real - it turns out that the emotions we experience in the network are subject to this effect. Researchers from Tilburg University in the Netherlands analyzed more than 2,000 video blogs on Youtube and found that people “reflect” the emotions they see and are looking for those who share their emotional state.
“Our research confirms that the people we interact with online affect our daily emotional state, and interacting with happy (or angry) people improves (or worsens) our mood,” says study author Hannes Rosenbusch.
Falling under the influence of other people's emotions is a kind of "infection". In addition, people are looking for those who are similar to themselves, in this case - with similar views and are in a similar emotional state; in psychology, this is called "hemophilicity."
Youtube showcases five billion videos every day, and researchers have taken up vlogging because vlogging owners are a reliable source for research purposes by sharing their emotions and experiences.
Scientists focused on the most popular video blogs with at least 10,000 subscribers; some of the selected blogs had millions of subscribers.
To determine if viewers of the vlogs were emotionally infected or hemophilic, they analyzed the words and emotions of the videos, comparing them with the comments left by the viewers. They simulated both immediate (infection) and long-term (hemophilicity) reactions.
The team found evidence that there is both a lasting and an immediate effect that causes YouTube bloggers' emotions to correlate with audience emotions. When a video is posted with a generally positive tone, the audience responds with heightened positive emotions. The same is true for other emotional states.
The effect of video emotion on audience emotion likely involves a set of mechanisms such as contagion, empathy, and liking.
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This is the first study of emotional infection and hemophilicity based on a social network such as YouTube. Similar results were obtained in other studies [using text-based social networking sites Twitter and Facebook.
“Our social life is shifting more and more online, but our emotions and relationships will always be guided by basic psychological processes,” sums up Rosenbusch.
Vadim Tarabarko
