Facebook Mood Experiment

It’s interesting to see that Facebook’s venture into social research has caused such an outcry.  I think the issue people are having is that they do not want to be part of a social experiment without their consent.  Unfortunately the EULA (End User License Agreement) agreement we all sign to use Facebook gives them the authority to do just that.  They can use our data for “research” purposes.  

 

Given the circumstances however it is interesting to see the results of their week-long study about people’s emotions.  The people who’s feeds were manipulated to be positive tended to make positive posts and conversely those who’s feeds were manipulated to be sad or negative responded in kind with their posts.  

There are several takeaways from this experiment, the first is this type of manipulation has been going on throughout the history of advertising.  The whole point of marketing campaigns and product placement is to subliminally entice you to take some course of action whether it’s buying something or doing something.  What Facebook is doing is not new in the general scheme of things.  What is new is how intimate this manipulation has become and how many people are being affected.  

What does it mean that Facebook actually has the power to manipulate millions of people’s emotions just by controlling their feed?  Are our moods and emotions commodities?  How can other things like our elections be influenced by this type of experiment? These are some important questions that arise because of this type of social experiment. 

Last year a new study published by The National Academy of Sciences studied and mapped the effect emotions have on our bodies. Some of the emotions tested included anger, fear, sadness, love and happiness.  With the help of this imaging we get a chance to see physically how our bodies are energized or de-energized by the thoughts and emotions we choose to entertain.  

If you look at the imaging of the emotion of love you can see three main chakra centers of energy are charged giving our bodies optimal energy.  You can also see when our bodies experience negative emotions they are imbalanced and certain areas of the body are depleted of energy. 

Here is the article on the emotional imaging research

Given this new research in conjunction with the Facebook experiment, managing your own mood and energy takes on new importance.  By putting limits on our social and traditional media engagement we can have more control over our own emotions.  In so doing we give outside forces less of a chance to influence our emotions. 

A practical approach would be to set a regular time to check and respond to messages.  You can also set times during the day to check in with yourself to see what emotional mood you are in.  This gives you an opportunity to objectively assess your mood and make changes if necessary.

By taking ownership of our own emotions and limiting the opportunities for others to influence us, we can maintain an emotional balance throughout the day and maybe even begin to positively affect others.