A new Tulane University study explains why politically charged content on social media gets more engagement from those who disagree.
Lead author Daniel Mochon says researchers found what they call a “confrontation effect.”
“When people are really angry, that sort of motivates them to fight back and stand up against this sort of content,” says Mochon. “They essentially want to defend their views by attacking the source of this content.”
Mochon says people seem to be more empowered when the person they’re arguing with is far away.
“It’s a lot easier to stand up to people when they’re further away,” Mochon points out. “There’s more social distance. There are fewer consequences to standing up to people online.”
Mochon says constantly arguing hot-button topics online can have negative consequences offline.
“It is possible that this outrage that’s being fueled online eventually bleeds over to the real world,” Mochon says, “and people are showing versions of this in the offline world as well.”
Mochon says on most social media sites, the more they engage in content they disagree with, the more they will see content they disagree with.
“It might be beneficial to tweak their algorithm a little bit to potentially reduce the amount of rage-inducing content that people are exposed to,” says Mochon.
Mochon says the best thing to do is to simply ignore that content altogether.
“It might be helpful to be mindful of the fact that we’re engaging because of outrage,” Moshon says; “and doing so, it’s just going to lead to more outrage-inducing content.”
