On that controversial Facebook emotion study

The best controversies are those in which the headlines make you think one thing, but the full article pushes you another way. Eventually, you say, “I have no idea what to think on this one.” That happened to me last week when investigating Facebook’s social experiment on happiness.

Here’s the quick summary: a group of researchers published a study that finds “emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness.” Say what? Basically, if Facebook shows you more happy stuff, you feel happier. If they show sad stuff, you feel sad. The effect is slight, but it means big bucks for Facebook. Presumably, the happier you are when you leave Facebook, the more likely you are to come back.

So what’s the big deal? Just this little thing called informed consent. See, in academic research with human subjects (because of some crazy horrible experiments over the years), the gold standard before a researcher conducts an experiment is to receive express permission from those experimented upon. Such experiments include disclosures, and are governed by institutional review boards. This is well and good.