Facebook was playing with your emotions

Facebook has proven that it can control more than just its users’ social media presence; it can also control its users’ emotions.

The world’s largest social networking site is facing angry backlash after the company published results from a psychological study conducted on nearly a quarter million of its users. Without its users knowing, Facebook manipulated 700,000 newsfeeds for one week in 2012 in order to understand the concept of “emotional contagion”.

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Facebook paired up with researchers at Cornell University and the University of California at San Francisco to conduct an experiment on its users. While Facebook altered the algorithm used to place specific posts on users’ newsfeeds, the researchers analyzed whether or not the number of positive or negative words that appeared on their newsfeeds affected users’ moods.

The study aimed to discover how drastically social media could influence a person’s mood, and the study’s authors concluded, “Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness.”

The researchers found that people who viewed more positive posts were more likely to write more positive posts of their own. Conversely, those who saw more negative posts on their newsfeeds were more likely to post negative comments.

Although the study claimed that manipulating the newsfeed algorithm was “consistent with Facebook’s data use policy, to which all users agree prior to creating an account on Facebook,” many people are now upset, claiming that Facebook crossed ethical guidelines.

Adam Kramer, a co-author of the study, offered an apology via Facebook, saying, “I can understand why some people have concerns about it, and my co-authors and I are very sorry for the way the paper described the research and any anxiety it caused.

 “In hindsight, the research benefits of the paper may not have justified all of this anxiety.”

Although this social experiment didn’t break any laws, it has sparked questions over the company’s ethical boundaries.

Even Susan Fiske, one of the editor’s of the study and a Princeton academic, felt uneasy about the study’s questionable ethics. Fiske told The Guardian, “People are supposed to be told they are going to be participants in research and then agree to it and have the option not to agree to it without penalty.”

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