“Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks” (2017), by William J. Brady et al. Neuroscience research paper. Original abstract below, unchanged. No free PDF was found.

Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks

William J. Brady, Julian A. Wills, John T. Jost et al. · June 26, 2017 · Neuroscience

Abstract

= 563,312), we observed that the presence of moral-emotional words in messages increased their diffusion by a factor of 20% for each additional word. Furthermore, we found that moral contagion was bounded by group membership; moral-emotional language increased diffusion more strongly within liberal and conservative networks, and less between them. Our results highlight the importance of emotion in the social transmission of moral ideas and also demonstrate the utility of social network methods for studying morality. These findings offer insights into how people are exposed to moral and political ideas through social networks, thus expanding models of social influence and group polarization as people become increasingly immersed in social media networks.

Source page DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1618923114