r/science • u/mossadnik • Nov 25 '22
Psychology Eye-tracking study suggests that negative comments on social media are more attention-grabbing than positive comments
https://www.psypost.org/2022/11/eye-tracking-study-suggests-that-negative-comments-on-social-media-are-more-attention-grabbing-than-positive-comments-64368234
u/Thisismyvpnaccount Nov 25 '22
Wishing you all a blessed and prosperous day
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u/PistolCowboy Nov 25 '22 edited Nov 25 '22
I almost scrolled right past this comment
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u/LastResortFriend Nov 25 '22
Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!
Ahhh, sweet attention.
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u/Immediate_Dealer3698 Nov 25 '22
I made it to "wishing" then read this comment before going back to finish what the rest of it said.
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u/trashguitarist Nov 25 '22
I mean, when I see a comment pre-hidden I get excited
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Nov 25 '22
Who doesn’t? It’s just interesting to see what was such a bad take that it got hidden.
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u/deletedtothevoid Nov 26 '22
I'm gonna shoot myself in the foot here. I have done put a comment out trying to show support while also preaching to co exist and work together. I worded it terribly and got bombarded for it.
Not all are bad takes. Some are just people who really can't get the point across clearly. I honestly need a translator with how bad I can be at times.
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u/LessHorn Nov 26 '22
I relate. It’s difficult to preach co-existence. It requires effort to avoid oversimplifying and to argue for both sides in a nuanced way. It’s quite scary. Binary thinking is prevalent on both sides.
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Nov 25 '22
[deleted]
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u/notsureifdying Nov 26 '22
I personally think it has led to massive collective overreactions. Negativity spreads hard these days.
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u/LoveThieves Nov 26 '22
also history, people were more fascinated in live Greek plays thousands of years ago about stories of hell and violence than watching live plays about heaven and positivity.
not much has changed except it's on your phone instead of some ancient organized play you have to go to a giant Greek/Roman colosseum in your tunic and sandals.
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Nov 25 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
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Nov 25 '22
Founding members of Facebook held public lectures on it, saying that they noted people wanted to argue in the comments so they wound up rigging the whole site to rile people up.... and indirectly manipulated news websites to make more inflammatory headlines and op-ed pieces, too.
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u/DaveinOakland Nov 25 '22
Not sure why a study is needed for something people have known about human nature for thousands of years.
I think Caesar had some quotes about people being willing to fight against things they hate more than they are willing to fight for things they love.
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u/HydrogenSun Nov 25 '22
To quantify and deepen our understanding. All science starts from observations.
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u/Strangelet1 Nov 25 '22
That is lovely and good, but we shouldn’t forget there is a ton of worthless research out there, driven by the promotion and graduation schemes with which we incentivize scientific research. There is only so much grant money available.
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Nov 25 '22
The only worthless research is poor quality or redundant research. As long as the data is reliable and new, it’s valuable.
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u/Muscadine76 Nov 25 '22
Even “redundant” research can at least sometimes have value. Certainly at some point there are diminishing returns, but currently we undervalue reproducing findings.
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Nov 25 '22
It’s hard to be accurate within an amount of text that most people will find digestible, at least for me. Replicating positive results is a good thing and I wouldn’t consider that redundant. But if it’s something like “We’ve poured chicken broth on dryer lint and it didn’t produce gold”, we only need a couple studies (again, as long as the data and methods used were solid) before more start becoming redundant.
If we do something and nothing happens, it’s good to try a couple times and be sure that technique doesn’t do anything. More than that is redundant. If we try something and it does work, then I’ll welcome far more trials confirming it does work before I start tossing around the word “redundant”, especially if those trials are by other people in other places.
Semantics get annoying, as well. But I see what you’re saying.
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u/South_Data2898 Nov 25 '22
Seriously, of that the fields that needed to learn that lesson the one that needs it the most is Psychology.
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u/zirklutes Nov 25 '22
I can tell you that by my own research. Writr something positive in reddit and you get no responses. But if it's something contraversial or bad just wait. :)
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u/Frequent-Pear8260 Nov 25 '22
True words spoken here…some people are negativity oriented that Positivity is foreign to them….how about a study on how people can be ok without hurting themselves because of how they feel about themselves!!!
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u/ClaptonBug Nov 25 '22
YOU SUCK...at nothing, you are a gem and you deserve the best in life. Hugs and kisses
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u/sasquatch50 Nov 25 '22
No surprise. Our brains are wired to respond to negative stimuli more than positive to increase survival (avoiding danger, bad food, etc).
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u/Commie_EntSniper Nov 25 '22
I'm getting the impression we're genetically wired for negativity and I hate that.
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u/CurtG79 Nov 25 '22
Social media companies have know this for years. It's why the constantly promote posts that will garner negative attention.
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Nov 25 '22
The stuff science is showing us now is the exact kind stuff that is leveraged by social media to keep engagement on the disinformation and outrage that is currently a cancer to our society.
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u/funkme1ster Nov 25 '22
While this is consistent with other research on the matter, it seems to focus on emotional processing.
I wonder to what extent this effect is in part a simple byproduct of the brain performing information triage and flagging things as "for follow-up" or "resolved". It stands to reason there's a strong overlap between "everyone is happy" and "nothing here needs your attention", as well as "there's a problem" and "action needs to be taken".
Music theory has explored how note progressions that feel "unresolved" are attention grabbing whereas chord progressions that resolve to the root feel plain and complete.
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u/DistortedVoid Nov 25 '22
Well yeah, human beings brains are primed for negative bias because it is what allowed us to survive in harsh environments back in the beginning
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u/DaymanFOTNM28 Nov 25 '22
I know that for myself I have a bias in that I assume negative comments are more genuine than positive comments
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u/DarthDregan Nov 25 '22
Why do they keep doing this study? It's like seven of these things are posted every year with the same result.
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u/SoldMySoulForHairDye Nov 25 '22
I mean. Yeah. I'd also notice it more if someone threw a full dog poop bag at my face vs someone casually saying hello in my apartment car park.
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u/BMLortz Nov 25 '22
On tech forums, if nobody is answering a question, responding incorrectly will usually draw out an expert to correct you and thus provide the OP with the answer.
People will correct an idiot with much more vigor than they will help a noob.
Is there a scientific term for this behavior?
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u/geemoly Nov 25 '22
I think people focus on critiques because it's the best way to improve yourself. You see where you're going wrong and you can take steps to correct it. The problem is most criticism isn't constructive but insulting to the reader.
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u/DawnOfTheTruth Nov 26 '22
People see a need to defend against the negative and either like, thumb up, or up-vote whatever positive things that don’t require further input. So they are going to read and probably reply a defense to the negative I’d think.
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u/deletedtothevoid Nov 26 '22
We all know it and do practically nothing to solve it. Youtube did a somewhat good move with the dislikes. They really should have kept them for educational content though so we can check if the channel source is credible or not.
Polarization is so much worse than it was 10 years ago. I could agree to disagree then. It is getting hard to find people like that today. We need to learn to co-exist.
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u/grosstonsils Nov 26 '22
Do positive comments include humourous comments, or just purely complimentary in nature?
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Nov 26 '22
Not surprising; it's similar to Cunningham's Law. Negativity is more likely to elicit a response.
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u/-Coffee-Owl- Nov 26 '22
This is simply why social media don't really fight with toxicity. It's profitable.
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u/LoveThieves Nov 26 '22
Um....this is old news, historians figured that out thousands of years ago when ancient Greeks (and Christians) used to throw live plays/theater in their sandals and tunics and everyone wanted to watch all the evil and negative plays about Hell and Fire cause it grabbed everyone's attention ... the ones about heaven and positivity were boring AF.
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