Neuroscientists have explained the desire to repost
Neuroscientists from the University of Pennsylvania in the United States explained how the human brain decides whether or not to share information. The article was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Information exchange on the Internet plays an important role in modern society, determining how to spread news and ideas, as well as the impact they will have on readers. Every day I write about four billion messages in Facebook, 500 million tweets and 200 billion e-mail messages that emphasizes the importance of these channels of communication.
Meanwhile, not all the information the users share the same readily: while some messages become “viral”, the others don’t get the popularity. While to date, almost no research program from the point of view of psychology and neurobiology to predict the likelihood that people will share particular information.
The authors of the new work suggested that the willingness to share information depends on two key components: its value to the reader and its value to society.
In the first case, the individual determines how she relates to his personal experience or with what he would like to be and the second how it will be interesting to others and what others think about him. On this basis scientists on the basis of past studies have identified the brain region that should be associated with the desire to share the message: the medial prefrontal cortex, bark the rear of the cingulate gyrus, breakline, temporo-parietal site and right superior temporal sulcus.
Then neuroscientists conducted an experiment in which they are using functional magnetic resonance imaging monitored the activity of the above mentioned areas of the brain in 80 volunteers. Participants were asked to read the titles and brief descriptions of articles on medical topics from the online version of the newspaper The New York Times, and then decide whether they want to repost in Facebook. In parallel, the researchers compared the results of the experiment with the number of times the real readers shared these notes.
It turned out that articles that have caused the greatest increase in activity in the “value” areas of the brain in subjects, was also the most popular among regular readers of The New York Times. The participants of the study were not included in the main target audience of the newspaper — they were University students aged 18-24 years.
The result is consistent with the assumption that people are largely aware of the importance of information for other members of society.
In addition, the experiment showed that both activated region of the brain associated with individual values, and social. Therefore, one takes into account all the potential consequences of sharing information.
In addition, the researchers also compared the predictive power of brain activity with the predictive strength of the desire to share the message that the subjects were assessed independently, and found that in some cases it can predict “virality” of the articles even better than a conscious intention.
“In practice, this means that if you create a message that will explain to the reader why by sharing it, it will look better in the eyes of others or how it will improve his relationships with others, it will increase the likelihood that it really will make a repost” — says the author of the work.
Recently, scientists have explained how social networks and repost friends can distort our view of reality. According to them, “rassharivat” messages to friends and “unsubscribing” on those whose opinions differ from ours, we find ourselves in the “achocalla”, which allows misinformation to spread within the group with great speed. In addition, scientists recently discovered that comments on Facebook can affect the opinion of voters about the candidacy of a politician.
Christina Ulasovich