Anger is a powerful emotion — at least on Twitter.
Angry messages get more attention on social media than happy and inspiring ones, a new study claims.
Researchers at Beihang University in China reviewed 70 billion Tweets and discovered angry ones are most likely to earn re-tweets — and ultimately influence others.
The study notes “highly connected” users categorized each tweet into one of four emotions — joy, sadness, disgust, and anger — and the mad messages earn the most views.
“Anger is more powerful than other emotions [online]” researchers concluded in the study.
The study focused on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, over a period of six months and found irate Tweets were often retweeted by three degrees of separation from the original message.
Anger had a “surprisingly” higher correlation to influence than the other three, researchers wrote in the study.
International conflicts and domestic problems trigger the most angry Tweets in China, according to the study.