Last time on the Facebook experiment thing, I promise. Feel free to skip it if youre tired of the whole deal or just want to see the next post about funny shit in San Francisco. But if you want to see my complex, conflicted thoughts on the matter, here they are. I totally understand people feeling upset about the study. I agree that it would have been more ethical to have gotten more informed consent, and to give subjects a post-experiment review. I totally understand that people take serious issue with feeling like their emotions have been manipulated. Several dear friends are upset about it, and Im not going to try to deny them that anger. But I will try to explain why Im not angry about it. And, in fact, why I think it was an overall good thing--even while I agree it could have been done better. The thing is, with every single website you look at, show you watch, or game you play, fact or fiction or anything in-between, your emotions are being manipulated by what the creators choose to show or hide, and in what order and context they show it. Im not trying to justify things by saying everyone does it -- Im saying that at a fundamental level, this is how literally every sort of media works. We like the media we like because it manipulates our emotions the way we want them to be manipulated. Now, this can be used for all sorts of good or nefarious purposes, and Im happy to talk about the ethical and moral implications of provoking emotional responses in media any time. After all, as a writer and game designer, my work deals with multiple ways of manipulating peoples emotions through stories and systems, so I take this very seriously. And Im constantly aware of the ways media around me is trying to manipulate my emotions. But when a well-written book makes us sad, we dont respond with calls for boycotts. Thats because its widely understood that this is a risk you take from reading a book. Everyone knows an author is trying to provoke emotional response, and goes into the situation aware of it. But it seems like there are a lot more people out there who havent really embraced the idea that its a risk you take when you use a social network. This is kind of bonkers to me, because sites like Facebook, OK Cupid, Twitter, and even a Google search page are *all* about emotional manipulation, from countless sources. Every post/profile/page you see from someone is an attempt to project a particular image or instill a particular emotion. Whats more, all of these are presented by the website in a fashion that is carefully calculated to manipulate your emotions as well. For example, most of my posts are meant to amuse or inspire empathy. Whether or not they appear on your feed (and how) is determined by Facebooks feed algorithm, which is presumably meant to keep you engaged with the site, posting content of your own, and maybe looking at ads. Even if your goal is to be completely open and honest or purely factual, your presentation will still influence peoples emotions. Being aware of what effect youre having on people isnt just useful, its a moral imperative. So, yes, Facebook tested the effect of seeing emotional content on their emotional output. One of the things they tested was the common contention that seeing positive posts when youre in a bad mood makes your mood worse. As someone who makes a lot of positive posts and doesnt want to make my friends have bad moods, this is data that is deeply important to me. And publishing the paper advances the understanding of social psychology in a real and useful way. In my mind, that makes this manipulation better than most other media sources, because its benefiting knowledge as a whole. (Please dont argue that the test shouldnt have been done because the results were obvious or predictable, because thats not how real science works. Science tests its assumptions in the real world. Otherwise, its called faith.) I dont like the fact that Facebook didnt give users a way of opting out of research, or a more clear heads-up that emotional research would be done. I realize that doing so may have biased the tests results or skewed their sample pool, but I trust clever researchers can find a way to minimize that impact. Facebook has never been good about explaining themselves to their users, whether performing research or changing the layout (which is, itself, another way of testing the emotional impact of their site). Add my voice to the crowd saying that they really need to improve on this. But I just cant get that upset about the study itself. Certainly not like I am by day-to-day abuses of power by people who really can make life difficult, like the NSA or the Supreme Court or the like. Thats all for now. Id be happy to elaborate or discuss in the comments, but Im not trying to change anyones mind. Just explaining my own.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 21:45:55 +0000