Emotion and Virality

Exploration of the article 'What makes online content viral?' by Jonah Berger and Katherine L. Milkman presentation by Alexandra van Gorp, Alexandre Gartner, Bart Gout & Rozemarijn Stam

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This video from Jimmy Fallon's talk show topped The Guardian's Viral Video Chart last week, grabbing the most online shares and amounting to a total of 15 million views within a week. 

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Study 2: How high-arousal emotions affect transmission

With the second study the authors wanted to test:

directly the causal impact of specific emotions on social transmissions

the hypothesized mechanism behind these effects, namely whether the arousal induced by content drives transmission

whether their findings would generalize to other marketing content

Hypothesis: "Content that evokes more of an activating emotion (amusement or anger) is more likely to be shared"

Study 2A - Amusement in an advertising campaign

49 participants

high versus low amusement version of a campaign (adapted from prior work)

how likely to share the campaign with others and what their level of arousal was

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Participants proved to be more likely to share the advertising campaign when it induced more amusement, and this was driven by the arousal it evoked

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Study 2B - Anger in a customer service experience

45 participants

high versus low anger version about a negative customer service experience (pre-tested to evoke anger but no other emotions)

how likely to share the story with others and what their level of arousal was

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Participants said they would be more likely to share the customer service experience when it induced more anger, and this was driven by the arousal it evoked

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Discussion

the amount of emotion content evoked influenced transmission

arousal mediated the impact of emotion and social transmission

Experimental results reinforce the findings from the archival field study, support the hypothesized process, and generalize the findings to a broader range of content

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Study 3: How deactivating emotions affect transmission

Deactivation hypothesis: content that evokes more sadness, for example, should be less likely to be shared because it deactivates rather than activates.

47 participants 

high versus low sadness version of a news article (pre-tested for sadness but not other emotions)

how likely to share the story with others and what their level of arousal was

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When the content evoked a deactivating (i.e. de-arousing) emotion, the effects on transmission were reversed

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Discussion

Consistent with the findings of the field study, when content evoked more of a low arousal emotion it was actually less likely to be shared. These effects were driven by arousal

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General discussion

The study combined a broad analysis of virality in the field with a series of controlled laboratory experiments.

Contributions to the literature

positive content is more viral than negative content

online content that evoked high-arousal emotions is more viral, regardless of whether these are positive or negative

more practically useful, interesting, and surprising content is more viral

while being featured prominently, for example, increases the likelihood that content will be highly shared, content characteristics are of similar importance

Theoretical implications

the emotion (and activation) that content evokes in individuals helps determine which cultural items succeed in the marketplace of ideas

social transmission may be less about motivation and more about the transmitter’s internal states

differentiation between characteristics to make advertisements more effective and characteristics to make them more likely to be shared

Future research

narrowcasting versus broadcasting

connection between article characteristics and blogging

influence of situational factors

transmission: driven by motivation or internal state of the sender?

Marketing research

use of content that evokes activating emotions in advertisements

focus on high-arousal effects rather than positive vs. negative content

customer service: more attention to high-arousal negative emotions

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Rather than targeting 'special' people, the research suggests that it may be more beneficial to focus on crafting contagious content

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Personal Notes

Study 2a & b There is a difference between goods and service (as seen in Berry and Lampoo, 2004), comparing apples with pears. Solution?  Assessing the same emotion(s) in all different examined fields.

Narrowcasting versus broadcasting If the sending of e-mail is known as narrowcasting, and recipient is based, doesn't that mean that the role of emotion is of less importance than when we look at the sharing of information via bigger mediums (broadcasting)? And, isn't the sharing of information via email outdated? 

Random assumptions Common knowledge: people are more likely to share negative news. Where is this based on? Biased: people are more sensitive to noticing negative aspects (which IS common knowlegde). 

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