Thumbs down from users on Facebook’s psychological study
Outrage is growing regarding Facebook’s (FB) study on user emotions on the social network.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked to determine how happy or sad status updates affected other Facebook “friends.” Researchers from Facebook, University of California, San Francisco and Cornell University manipulated the News Feeds of nearly 700,000 users to control the amount of positive or negative emotional content that appeared in the feed.
According to the researchers, many believe that happy posts on Facebook may be depressing to online friends – an effect they call “alone together.” But Facebook’s study found that when positive posts were reduced, friends were less likely to post happy posts themselves and more likely to post negative posts. And when negative posts were limited, others were more likely to express positive emotions on Facebook....