Researchers introduce framework for understanding how emotional content influences people online

Every day, billions of people scroll through social media posts, online reviews and news feeds filled with emotional content - from glowing five-star reviews to rage-inducing social media rants. Those emotions can quietly shape what people buy, what they believe and how they act.

University of South Florida research published in MIS Quarterly introduces a framework for explaining how emotional content affects people online - and why its effects can be so powerful and sometimes contradictory.

The Tripartite Reactions to Emotions theory gives researchers, platform designers, marketers and policymakers a shared framework for understanding how emotional content influences people online and how those effects might be anticipated, measured and managed.

According to the theory, when someone expresses emotion in an online post or review, it can trigger three distinct psychological reactions, sometimes simultaneously:

• People form impressions of the product, place or idea being discussed.
• They make judgments about the person who wrote or posted the content.
• They experience some of the emotion themselves, an effect known as emotional contagion.

Understanding these three distinct reactions helps explain why emotional content online can be so powerful - and why its effects are often surprising or contradictory."

Dezhi Yin, lead author and professor, University of South Florida Muma College of Business

The three reactions can lead to very different - and sometimes conflicting - behaviors.

One of the theory's most surprising insights, Yin said, is that an emotional post or review can simultaneously push people toward and away from a product or brand.

For example, an angry review might cause readers to trust the reviewer less and discount the review, while still making them feel negatively about the product being reviewed.

The framework provides a way to distinguish these different reactions and better understand how they interact, helping explain why the same piece of emotional content can have multiple effects on the people who encounter it.

The paper's other co-authors are Samuel Bond of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Han Zhang of Hong Kong Baptist University.