Why are so many people angry on social media? (pt. 4)

So what does this product design encourage?

The answer is emotional content, especially those that inspire anger and take moral high ground to judge others. William Brady, a New York University researcher, found that on twitter, if emotional and moral evaluation expressions are used in a tweet, then one more emotional and moral evaluation word will increase the number of tweets forwarded by 20%. Of course, it relates to our human nature. We are easily motivated by angry content to forward. But at the same time, this is also related to product design. If these social media products do not take "forwarding" as the core mechanism of information dissemination, emotional and angry content will not be so easy to spread.

For example, when you are walking on the street, you suddenly hear someone quarreling and are about to fight. You are likely to go around and see what happens. When you go to have a look, you find that you know one of them. Now you may choose to stand on the side and even join in the fight. What social media does every day is to let us see people quarreling and lure us to join.

那么，这种产品设计鼓励的是什么内容呢？

答案是：情绪化的内容，尤其是那些激发人愤怒情绪的，挥舞道德大棒去打击别人的内容。纽约大学的研究者William Brady就发现，在推特上，如果一条推文里面用了情绪化的、道德评价的语言，那么每一个情绪化的、道德评价的词都会让这条推文获得的转发数增长20%。这当然和我们人类的天性有关，因为我们就是很容易被愤怒的内容激发转发的欲望；但同时，这也和产品设计有关：因为如果这些社交媒体产品不将“转发”作为信息传播的核心机制，那么情绪化的、愤怒的内容也不会那么容易传播了。

我们可以打个比方：就比如，你在路上走着，忽然听到有人在吵架，而且要打起来了，你很可能会去围观一下，看发生了什么。你过去一看，发现其中一个人你认识，这下你可能马上会选边站，甚至也加入一起去吵。而社交媒体每天在做的，就是天天让我们看到有人在吵架，天天引诱我们去加入。
From: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/FvUpV-wXxObUEPa4_rXyYg