JULIO LEDESMA NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL

Senior High School

Practical Research I

Read the Research overview below entitled “Experimental evidence of massive-scale

emotional contagion through social networks” by Kramer, A.D.I., Guillory, J.E., &
Hancock, J.T. 2014

Significance

The study shows, via a massive (N=689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be
transferred to other via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without
their awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct
interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the
complete absence of nonverbal cues.
The Essentials:
1. Over a one-week period in 2012, researchers manipulated the news feeds for a random sample of
close to 700,000 Facebook users. News Feed is the constantly updating list of content from your
friends that is shown on the middle of your Facebook page. Because there are typically more
stories than can be displayed, Facebook uses an algorithm that tries to show the stories a user
would find most engaging or relevant.
2. One group had reduced negative content; one reduced positive by using the Linguistic Inquiry
and Word Count software (LIWC2007) to determine emotionality of content
3. The hypothesis was that subsequent user posts to Facebook would be affected by what they saw
in the News Feed
People in the positivity-reduced group would have less positive posts
People in the negativity-reduced group would have less negative posts
The results supported the hypothesis that people’s emotions may be affected by what their
friends say (social contagion)
4. Facebook users were not asked whether they wanted to participate in this study
It was assumed that the Facebook Data Use Policy, to which every user agrees, had informed
users that their data might be used for such research purposes: Among other things, Facebook
uses information “for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing,
research and service improvement.”

Questions:

1. What is the main objective of the study?

2. How did the researchers gather data for the study?
3. For accuracy of data, what strategy did the team use?
4. What are the different variables utilized in the study?
5. What was the conclusion based on the interpreted data?
6. Do you think the researchers committed any violations in the conduct of research? Why or why
not?
7. What ethical issues should be observed in the research?