[inimino]

Are you saying the paper itself is interesting, or that what the paper says about Facebook is interesting?

The actual result (people who see positive or negative messages are more likely to post the same) seems so obvious and uninteresting as not to be worth mentioning at all, though the fact that Facebook was willing to run the experiment and publish the result is perhaps more notable.

[disgruntledphd2]

The context at the time was that some authors were making the argument that seeing positive posts on FB increased negative affect.

This study, which was much larger, showed that this was not the case.

[inimino]

Oh my. That would indeed be interesting, if only the method could even have a hope to show such a thing.

From the abstract:

> When positive expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred.

Well and good, when people see more positive posts, they post more positively. But then:

> This work also suggests that, [...] the observation of others’ positive experiences constitutes a positive experience for people.

What a leap into the dark that is!

This study cannot show anything about affect, only about what was measured, which is what people posted on Facebook.

[disgruntledphd2]

Entirely agreed. But the previous study was a self-reported observational analysis, with appproximately 300 (German) participants.

I'm not defending the study in general, but the context of the research is somewhat important.