Emotional Contagions in Social Networks

These results highlight several features of emotional contagion. First, because News Feed content is not “directed” toward anyone, contagion could not be just the result of some specific interaction with a happy or sad partner. Although prior research examined whether an emotion can be contracted via a direct interaction (1, 7), we show that simply failing to “overhear” a friend’s emotional expression via Facebook is enough to buffer one from its effects. Second, although nonverbal ...

 Laurie R. Santos & Tamar Gendler: Knowing is Half the Battle

The irony is that knowing that the G.I. Joe Fallacy is a fallacy is—as the fallacy would predict—less than half the battle. As is knowing that people tend to experience $19.99 as a significantly lower price than $20.00. Even if you know about this left-digit anchoring effect, the first item will still feel like a significantly better deal. Even if you know about ego depletion effects, the prisoner you encounter after lunch will still seem like a better candidate for parole. Even if you kn...

 Emotional ABCs

The ABC model of emotion, widespread in contemporary psychotherapy, holds that it is not an activating (A) event, such as rejection by a friend or lover, that causes you emotional consequences (C) such as depression; rather, the linchpin is your invisible beliefs (B) about the event that come in between A and C. Fortunately, it's often easier to intentionally change beliefs than emotions. Since at least the time of the ancient Stoics, some have believed that our circumstances don't control ...

 Molyneux's problem

I shall here insert a problem of that very ingenious and studious promoter of real knowledge, the learned and worthy Mr. Molyneux, which he was pleased to send me in a letter some months since; and it is this:- "Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and the other, which is the cube, which the sphere. Suppose then the cube and sphere placed on...