How Anger Spreads Online

This discussion is an adaptation of a part of an excellent discussion, The Story of Us, written and posted by Kristen Solindas on Snowflake’s Forum. The 6-minute video makes a clear, understandable analogy between how and why emotions spread online, including anger, and how a virus spreads. This analogy would probably resonate with most people. The video refers to the virus as bypassing the mental immune system. The mental immune system is conscious reason. Conscious reason can easily be tricked into switching off in favor of letting unconscious emotional reactions run free and wild.

This issue, the spread of reason-killing emotions online, exemplifies why the phrase “unwarranted emotional manipulation”[1] has appeared on this blog dozens or maybe hundreds of times. It is why I criticize unwarranted emotional manipulation (UEM) as a possible existential threat to various things including liberal democracy, the rule of law, civilization and maybe even the survival of the human species.





The data the video is based on is from a 2012 research paper by Jonah Berger and Katherine L Milkman at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. The data summary is shown below. According to this research, anger is the most contagious online emotion and sadness is the least contagious.

Berger and Milkman write in their paper:

“Why are certain pieces of online content more viral than others? This article takes a psychological approach to understanding diffusion. Using a unique dataset of all the New York Times articles published over a three month period, the authors examine how emotion shapes virality. Results indicate that positive content is more viral than negative content, but that the relationship between emotion and social transmission is more complex than valence alone. Virality is driven, in part, by physiological arousal. Content that evokes high-arousal positive (awe) or negative (anger or anxiety) emotions is more viral. Content that evokes low arousal, or deactivating emotions (e.g., sadness) is less viral. These results hold even controlling for how surprising, interesting, or practically useful content is (all of which are positively linked to virality), as well as external drivers of attention (e.g., how prominently content was featured).”

For me, the surprising thing here is the researcher’s data showing that positive emotions tend to be more viral than negative emotion, apparently other than anger. The caveat here is that Berger and Milkman are marketers looking for ways to make online advertising more effective. It isn’t clear if other researchers looking for politically effective online content would see the same results. From what I can tell, fear, anger and disgust are among the most effectively manipulated emotions in online partisan political content.

Regardless, the main point of this research is clear: Political partisans who rely on dark free speech that foments anger as an UEM tool are trying to build an irrational tribalism by exploiting an innate human weakness. Anger tends to suppress or completely block conscious reasoning or logic, which is precisely what emotional manipulators want. Humans evolved this way. To at least try to mount a defense against UEM, people need to be aware of this human trait in themselves.


Footnote:
1. Unwarranted emotional manipulation usually appears as part of my conception of dark free speech, which I define as follows: Constitutionally or legally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), and (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism. (my label, my definition)