Facebook is taking advantage of your emotions

Do you have a Facebook account? If so, you may be one of the almost 700,000 people Facebook used as their very own lab rats. Facebook decided to test how negative stories can influence your inclination to write negative posts.

According to the authors of the study: “We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues.”

What’s worse is that neither Facebook nor the researchers see anything wrong in conducting a study like this. As it turns out, somewhere in the fine print of the user agreement between you and Facebook you have agreed to be a part of experiments just like this. What can you expect from a service where you willingly give away all of your personal information, for free?