New Study Explains Why Trump's 'Sad' Tweets Are So Effective (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: During his campaign and presidency, Donald Trump has used Twitter to circumvent traditional media broadcasters and speak directly to the masses. He is particularly known for one specific tweet construction: he sets up a situation that he feels should inspire anger or outrage, then punctuates it with "Sad!" New research from New York University suggests a reason why this style is so effective: a tweet containing moral and emotional language spreads farther among people with similar political persuasion. The study offered up "duty" as an example of a purely moral word, "fear" as a purely emotional one, and "hate" as word that combined the two categories. The research found that the use of purely moral or purely emotional language had a limited impact on the spread of a tweet, but the "presence of moral-emotional words in messages increased their diffusion by a factor of 20% for each additional word." The impact of this language cut both ways. Tweets with moral-emotional words spread further among those with a similar political outlook, and they spread less with those who held opposing views, according to the research published in the journal PNAS. The study looked at 563,312 tweets on the topics of gun control, same-sex marriage, and climate change, and rated their impact by the number of retweets each one received.

Comments

You Can Do Something About It

[SoftwareArtist]

Yes, emotionally manipulative language is effective, but it doesn't have to be. Train yourself to look for it, and then choose to reject it. When you see someone appealing to your emotions instead of your reason, recognize what they're doing and call them out for it. That's especially true when they're saying things you agree with, because that's when you're most vulnerable to manipulation. We each have the responsibility to reject people who try to manipulate our emotions and tell them that's not acceptable. We also have the responsibility not to stoop to doing it ourselves. If your arguments are sound, they can stand on their own without emotionally manipulative language. If you find you can't make your arguments sound convincing without it, that's a pretty good clue there's something wrong with them.