TY - JOUR
T1 - The Spreading of Social Energy
T2 - How Exposure to Positive and Negative Social News Affects Behavior
AU - Yao, Ziqing
AU - Yu, Rongjun
N1 - Funding Information:
Funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31371128), MOE Tier 1: R-581-000-191-112, and National University of Singapore Grant WBS R-581-000-166-133 to RY for financial support. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Yao, Yu.
PY - 2016/6/2
Y1 - 2016/6/2
N2 - Social news, unlike video games or TV programs, conveys real-life interactions. Theoretically, social news in which people help or harm each other and violate rules should influence both prosocial and violation behaviors. In two experiments, we demonstrated the spreading effects of social news in a social interaction context emphasizing social conventions and a nonsocial interaction context emphasizing moral norms. Across the two studies, the results showed that positive social news increased cooperation (decreased defection) but had no effect on cheating, whereas negative social news increased cheating but with no change in cooperation (or defection). We conclude that there is a spreading impact of positive social news in the conventional norm domain and of negative social news in the moral norm domain.
AB - Social news, unlike video games or TV programs, conveys real-life interactions. Theoretically, social news in which people help or harm each other and violate rules should influence both prosocial and violation behaviors. In two experiments, we demonstrated the spreading effects of social news in a social interaction context emphasizing social conventions and a nonsocial interaction context emphasizing moral norms. Across the two studies, the results showed that positive social news increased cooperation (decreased defection) but had no effect on cheating, whereas negative social news increased cheating but with no change in cooperation (or defection). We conclude that there is a spreading impact of positive social news in the conventional norm domain and of negative social news in the moral norm domain.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84974736081&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0156062
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0156062
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 27253877
AN - SCOPUS:84974736081
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 11
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 6
M1 - e0156062
ER -