Catching the mood

The current issue (June) of The Psychologist features an interesting article on research into the affective affordances of social networks. Social networks in the widest sense have been around since the dawn of civilisation, but with the advent of online social networks such as Facebook, and the vast populations of users who participate in interaction worldwide, social networks now take on a whole new dimension, and there is plenty of potential for research into their effects.

The current article (Totterdell et al, 2009) speculates that online social networks may enable those who are connected together with very wide groups of 'friends' to transfer feelings across their networks. So, for example, if one member's close relative dies, and she shares that sad news to her social network, many of her Facebook friends might feel a personal sense of loss and may even join in the mourning, even though they may not have known the person who has died. According to the article, it's not just emotions (such as anger or fear) that could be propogated through social media, but also general moods (gloominess, calm) and more enduring states such as feelings of well-being and happiness can also be transmitted and caught by other members of a social group.

The authors further claim that the social ties don't even need to be very strong for this to occur. They cite a number of research studies including some in which feelings and emotions have been transferred between people through two identified psychological processes. The first is a cognitive inferential mechanism, where thinking and reflection is involved, and then there is something known as primitive emotional contagion - where subconsciously, we mimic the emotions and postures of those we are interacting with, especially if we wish to convey friendship. As I read this section, I thought of the 'postural echoing' I observe when I'm in the shopping mall, or waiting in the departure lounge. People sat or standing together tend to echo their partners postures, in an unconscious display of affinity (as in the pictures above).

If the speculation is correct, and we behave similarly in virtual worlds as we do in real life, online social networking is probably a great deal more powerful than many of us think - and can possibly transmit strong emotions and cause large movements of mood effects across populations. The more we are connected, the more we may be affected.

Reference: Totterdell, P., Niven, K. and Holman, D. (2010) Our Emotional Neighbourhoods. The Psychologist, 23 (6), 474-477.

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Catching the mood by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 International License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.