The Facebook Experiment and You

Last weekend it was revealed that Facebook   secretly conducted a massive psychological   experiment on some 600,000 of its users by   trying to see if it could manipulate their   mood by showing them mostly either happy   posts or sad posts on their feeds.

The point of the experiment was to see whether   being subjected to either happy news or   sad news from friends would make Facebook  users more likely to write happy posts or  sad posts of their own, and sure enough,
if you saw nothing but happy posts you were  more likely to write something happy and  vice versa.

What they found is their is am emotional contagion that moods CAN and are spread  among social networks.

The data suggested that it did. “We show, via  a massive … experiment on Facebook, that  emotional states can be transferred to others  via emotional contagion, leading people to  experience the same emotions without their  awareness,” wrote the study’s authors,  scientists from Cornell University, the  University of California at San Francisco,  and Facebook’s own Core Data Science Team.

I’m going to stay out of the was it right  or wrong to conduct this experiment debate.

What is interesting and instructive here is…

That’s why the 4 Core principle in out program is social support. ( I should change that to POSITIVE social support)

Social support-Getting positive support from other like minded people to help move you to your goals is

If you hang out with people that don’t care about what they put in their mouths. Don’t make  any effort to maintain a healthy weight. Never exercise or stay active and regularly.

It’s nearly impossible to escape their  influence.

If the “mood” at 5 o’clock is Oh thank  GOD! time to drink myself blind at happy hour  or go sit on the couch for 4 hours until  bedtime…

You’re going to have to fight that momentumwhen you’re  changing into your workout clothes in the employee bathroom at work.

You’re going to HAVE to be connected to some  people that feel that not only is eating in a waythat promotes your health and you feel betterand get out and DO things like exercise.this the right thing to do.