Scientists have used brain scans to predict whether news articles will go viral by identifying the areas of the brain that light up when we decide to share them.
In two studies, scientists looked at how the brain decides what to read and share, and correctly predicted how viral an article would go just from looking at readers’ brain scans.
In the first study, a team scanned the brain when test subjects read article headlines.
The data showed that when people were deciding what to read themselves or what to share, in both situations they were thinking about themselves and what other people would think.
In another study, researchers looked at the same brain areas of 80 test subjects while they considered whether or not to share a number of New York Times health articles.
The areas of the brain that deal with the self and imagining what others might think signalled how much value people gave to each story, and this value predicted how much the article had been shared.
The test subjects were not even a New York Times audience, but their brain activity still predicted how popular the articles were with the paper’s usual demographic.
ugh what will it take for me to go viral
WHAT DO THE PEOPLE WANT— jess (@adorejesssica_) March 1, 2017
So, what psychologically drives us to share things? According to Emily Falk, the senior author on both papers, it’s mainly down to showing off.“They share things that might improve their relationships, make them look smart or empathic or cast them in a positive light,” she said.The studies will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences respectively.
