Warning: Facebook has your number

Published in the Waikato Times

A social media experiment to gauge the emotions of Facebook users has been described as "scary" and could leave people feeling "a little creeped out".

The results of a psychological study on almost 700,000 English-speaking Facebook users in 2012 has been released although many of those who took part were probably unaware they were being studied.

The study was co-written by Jamie Guillory from the centre for tobacco control research and education at University of California, Jeffrey Hancock from Cornell University and Adam Kramer, a member of Facebook's core data science team.

The results showed social media feeds have the ability to influence users emotions, both positively and negatively.

Facebook skewed users' news feeds and found that when exposure to negative posts was reduced, it led to an increase of positive posts by the user, although the user tended to be less expressive overall on the following days.

The study said it addressed the question about how emotional expression affected social engagement online.

It said: "The fact that people were more emotionally positive in response to positive emotion updates from their friends, stands in contrast to theories that suggest viewing positive posts by friends on Facebook may somehow affect us negatively, for example, via social comparison."

Netsafe executive director Martin Cocker said people should be aware that Facebook conducts such experiments and that it can study content people post.

But he also said users should not be worried about the results of the study because it was generally accepted by psychologists that emotions could be influenced by the environment people operated in.

"It's no surprise at all that the same occurs on social networking sites as in society."

The study results were also likely be used to help better tailor advertisements to people using Facebook.

Signing up for a Facebook account requires people to give the site permission to conduct research on users, as part of its terms and conditions.

Hamilton woman Shelley Mcquade was one of a number of people who responded to questions posted by the Waikato Times on its Facebook page about the study.

In an interview with the Times, she said she had signed up to Facebook a long time ago and was unable to remember the terms and conditions.

"Lots of other things have terms and conditions and you have to read the fine print and know what you are signing up to. I feel they do need your permission first. They can't just go and spy on you. If you don't know what they are doing it's a little bit scary."

The scientist who edited the study is unsure whether Facebook has broken any ethical boundaries but expressed concern over users' response.

"I think it's an open question," Susan Fiske, professor of psychology at Princeton University, told US magazine Atlantic. "It's ethically okay from the regulations' perspective, but ethics are kind of social decisions.

"There's not an absolute answer and so the level of outrage that appears to be happening suggests that maybe it shouldn't have been done . . . I'm still thinking about it and I'm a little creeped out, too."

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