What makes online content viral?
| Authors | Berger, Milkman |
| Journal | Journal of Marketing Research |
| Year | 2012 |
| Type | Published Paper |
| Abstract | Why are certain pieces of online content (e.g., advertisements, videos, news articles) more viral than others? This article takes a psychological approach to understanding diffusion. Using a unique data set of all the New York Times articles published over a three-month period, the authors examine how emotion shapes virality. The results indicate that positive content is more viral than negative content, but the relationship between emotion and social transmission is more complex than valence alone. Virality is partially driven by physiological arousal. Content that evokes high-arousal positive (awe) or negative (anger or anxiety) emotions is more viral. Content that evokes low-arousal, or deactivating, emotions (e.g., sadness) is less viral. These results hold even when the authors control for how surprising, interesting, or practically useful content is (all of which are positively linked to virality), as well as external drivers of attention (e.g., how prominently content was featured). Experimental results further demonstrate the causal impact of specific emotion on transmission and illustrate that it is driven by the level of activation induced. Taken together, these findings shed light on why people share content and how to design more effective viral marketing campaigns. |
| Keywords | Word of mouth, viral marketing, social transmission, online content |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.10.0353 |
| Tags | Archival Empirical | Consumer Decisions | Experimental / Survey-Based Empirical | Media and Textual Analysis | Social Transmission Biases |
Getting the word out: Neural correlates of enthusiastic message propagation
| Authors | Falk, Donnell, Lieberman |
| Journal | Frontiers in Human Neuroscience |
| Year | 2012 |
| Type | Published Paper |
| Abstract | What happens in the mind of a person who first hears a potentially exciting idea? We examined the neural precursors of spreading ideas with enthusiasm, and dissected enthusiasm into component processes that can be identified through automated linguistic analysis, gestalt human ratings of combined linguistic and nonverbal cues, and points of convergence/divergence between the two. We combined tools from natural language processing (NLP) with data gathered using fMRI to link the neurocognitive mechanisms that are set in motion during initial exposure to ideas and subsequent behaviors of these message communicators outside of the scanner. Participants' neural activity was recorded as they reviewed ideas for potential television show pilots. Participants' language from video-taped interviews collected post-scan was transcribed and given to an automated linguistic sentiment analysis (SA) classifier, which returned ratings for evaluative language (evaluative vs. descriptive) and valence (positive vs. negative). Separately, human coders rated the enthusiasm with which participants transmitted each idea. More positive sentiment ratings by the automated classifier were associated with activation in neural regions including medial prefrontal cortex; MPFC, precuneus/ posterior cingulate cortex; PC/PCC, and medial temporal lobe; MTL. More evaluative, positive, descriptions were associated exclusively with neural activity in temporal-parietal junction (TPJ). Finally, human ratings indicative of more enthusiastic sentiment were associated with activation across these regions (MPFC, PC/PCC, DMPFC, TPJ, and MTL) as well as in ventral striatum (VS), inferior parietal lobule and premotor cortex. Taken together, these data demonstrate novel links between neural activity during initial idea encoding and the enthusiasm with which the ideas are subsequently delivered. This research lays the groundwork to use machine learning and neuroimaging data to study word of mouth communication and the spread of ideas in both traditional and new media environments. |
| Keywords | fMRI, sentiment analysis, natural language processing, information diffusion, word-of-mouth |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00313 |
| Tags | Experimental / Survey-Based Empirical | Social Transmission Biases |
Peer performance and stock market entry
| Authors | Kaustia, Knupfer |
| Journal | Journal of Financial Economics |
| Year | 2012 |
| Type | Published Paper |
| Abstract | Peer performance can influence the adoption of financial innovations and investment styles. We present evidence of this type of social influence: recent stock returns that local peers experience affect an individual's stock market entry decision, particularly in areas with better opportunities for social learning. The likelihood of entry does not decrease as returns fall below zero, consistent with people not talking about decisions that have produced inferior outcomes. Market returns, media coverage, local stocks, omitted local variables, short sales constraints, and stock purchases within households do not seem to explain these results. |
| Keywords | Investor behavior, peer effect, social interaction, social influence, stock market participation |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2011.01.010 |
| Tags | Archival Empirical | Financing- and Investment Decisions (Individual) | Social Transmission Biases |
Persuasion bias, social influence, and unidimensional opinions
| Authors | DeMarzo, Vayanos, Zwiebel |
| Journal | Quarterly Journal of Economics |
| Year | 2003 |
| Type | Published Paper |
| Abstract | We propose a boundedly rational model of opinion formation in which individuals are subject to persuasion bias; that is, they fail to account for possible repetition in the information they receive. We show that persuasion bias implies the phenomenon of social influence, whereby one's influence on group opinions depends not only on accuracy, but also on how well-connected one is in the social network that determines communication. Persuasion bias also implies the phenomenon of unidimensional opinions; that is, individuals' opinions over a multidimensional set of issues converge to a single "left-right" spectrum. We explore the implications of our model in several natural settings, including political science and marketing, and we obtain a number of novel empirical implications. |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.1162/00335530360698469 |
| Tags | Social Network Structure | Social Transmission Biases | Theory |
Bad is stronger than good
| Authors | Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, Vohs |
| Journal | Review of General Psychology |
| Year | 2001 |
| Type | Published Paper | Literature Review Paper |
| Abstract | The greater power of bad events over good ones is found in everyday events, major life events (e.g., trauma), close relationship outcomes, social network patterns, interpersonal interactions, and learning processes. Bad emotions, bad parents, and bad feedback have more impact than good ones, and bad information is processed more thoroughly than good. The self is more motivated to avoid bad self-definitions than to pursue good ones. Bad impressions and bad stereotypes are quicker to form and more resistant to disconfirmation than good ones. Various explanations such as diagnosticity and salience help explain some findings, but the greater power of bad events is still found when such variables are controlled. Hardly any exceptions (indicating greater power of good) can be found. Taken together, these findings suggest that bad is stronger than good, as a general principle across a broad range of psychological phenomena. |
| Keywords | Health economicsm, COVID-19, vaccines, lottery incentives, public policy |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.5.4.323 |
| Tags | Experimental / Survey-Based Empirical | Social Transmission Biases |
Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion
| Authors | Rozin, Royzman |
| Journal | Personality and Social Psychology Review |
| Year | 2001 |
| Type | Published Paper |
| Abstract | We hypothesize that there is a general bias, based on both innatepredispositions and experience, in animals and humans, to give greater weight to negative entities (e.g., events, objects, personal traits). This is manifested in 4 ways: (a) negative potency (negative entities are stronger than the equivalent positive entities), (b) steeper negative gradients (the negativity of negative events grows more rapidly with approach to them in space or time than does the positivity of positive events, (c) negativity dominance (combinations of negative and positive entities yield evaluations that are more negative than the algebraic sum of individual subjective valences would predict), and (d) negative differentiation (negative entities are more varied, yield more complex conceptual representations, and engage a wider response repertoire). We review evidence for this taxonomy, with emphasis on negativity dominance, including literary, historical, religious, and cultural sources, as well as the psychological literatures on learning, attention, impression formation, contagion, moral judgment, development, and memory. We then consider a variety of theoretical accounts for negativity bias. We suggest that 1 feature of negative events that make them dominant is that negative entities are more contagious than positive entities. |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327957PSPR0504_2 |
| Tags | Archival Empirical | Experimental / Survey-Based Empirical | Media and Textual Analysis | Social Transmission Biases |