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Anger is More Influential Than Joy: Sentiment Correlation in Weibo [pdf]
- fatihpense 13y agoMaybe this is because of anger is more related to political issues and joy is more related to personal issues.
- loceng 13y agoAnd if so, is that a sign of how unbalanced or unfair our current structures are?
- ChuckMcM 13y agoA number of public speaking coaches will tell you to be 'angry' as a slightly off vector emotion to passion. If you can be passionately angry about something other people will be more influenced by it than if you are passively happy about it. Not that this is news to anyone who has been in a group situation where the calm rational person with the good idea was over ruled by the angry person, resulting in the group doing what the angry person suggested instead. I had lunch at a conference with a woman who identified herself as a cultural anthropologist who identified this observation as part of the fight/flight nexus of responses. People she said prefer active directed action to random undirected action, and anger is nearly always directed. And in my own experience people seem to pay attention to angry speakers more (perhaps out of a fear to see if they are going to get targeted by that anger? I don't know). As Howard Beale would say, "I'm mad as hell and not going to take this anymore!" :-)