The Influence of Emotions on the Online Behavior of Internet Users

This paper will cover the influences that our emotions have on our behaviour and the impact that what we consume has on our emotions. How we feel may have more impact than we realised. So how emotions are connected with the way people search and behave?

A study found that seconds before the individuals scroll down, their expression is briefly happy then back to neutral. After they scroll though, they may show sadness, disappointment, or disgust. After viewing several results, it was found that less time spent meant less expression of fear or happiness. Surprisingly or not so surprisingly, most individuals spent a different amount of time than they thought they did regardless of their emotions. This suggests that individuals' emotional state may not have as great of an effect as previously thought in regards to individuals' perception of time. This could explain why people easily lose track of time when researching. As expected, negative emotions were present when the desired result was harder to find. Typically, the emotion was frustration. Sadness and anger weren't as prevalent.

When highly focused, the individual's mouth may be uncontrolled, causing it to open without them being consciously aware of it. In some of the individuals, this had some effect on the eyes too, but it varied in terms of how much effect it had on each individual. This caused the software to possibly misinterpret the emotion as surprise, and would explain why the data showed so much surprise. Further improvements to the measuring software are needed, especially how to cope with what appears to be indications of surprise when the individual actually may not feel surprise.

The individuals made quick decisions about the quality of information on each result rather than taking a brief period of time examining the quality of information. This seemed to coincide with higher levels of frustration. The individuals reported feeling tired, which may have contributed to their emotions throughout the study. The mood each participant reported feeling before the study had little variance throughout the study, suggesting that mood is not so easily changed. 

Clickbait

Clickbait is a common technique used to gain more clicks. Quite literally, it is meant to bait users into clicking it. Scams use this all the time. 'Click here to repair your PC'. 'Your computer has virus. Click here to contact technical support'. 'Click here to clean up your computer'. 'Attention: Your computer has been infected. Click here to install clean up tool'. Any of these sound familiar? These are mainly targeted to younger children and the elderly who are more gullible. Clickbait seeks to stir up anxiety, fear, or curiosity to ensure many people click it.

The main annoyance is most people know it's clickbait, yet cannot help but satisfy their innate desire to click it anyway. YouTube is a key example. A thumbnail that may be appealing. A title in all caps. Or a key word or phrase in all caps. All to make it impossible to resist clicking it.

The curiosity individuals' feel is because individuals feel uncomfortable not knowing. Not clicking it produces anxiety. If individuals don't click it now, chances are, they'll return to it later. This contributes to the finding that fake news is spread a lot due to clickbait. Most users share the link without reading the content. Just reading the link is enough. The users who receive the shared article may go to the website simply because they looked at the link. The link to a webpage may not reflect the title. This shows how potent clickbait can be.

Another finding is that the dopamine response is not triggered by clicking the link, it's by anticipating the result. Just thinking of what may be beyond is enough to trigger the dopamine response. This could explain why typos are ignored even when they are blatantly obvious. A scammer may misspell something and that can be an indication it's a scam, but the temptation can be overwhelming.

During research, I got extremely pissed to say the least when I fell for this video. The fact that anyone is susceptible to clickbait even if they are fully educated about it can be infuriating to many individuals. Data shows that the majority of individuals REGRET clicking the link. If my previous sentence was a link, you probably would have clicked it.

According to anecdotal evidence, the words being in caps triggers a certain unexplainable feeling. Capital letters seem to instill desire to click on the link. There is no clear difference between all the genders regarding the effect of capital letters. The main conclusion is that larger letters are more eye catching. Imagine a box. Imagine a bigger box. Regardless of your vision, if you can at least tell the difference between the boxes, you would be drawn to the bigger box. That's assuming you have no bias. Larger means more clicks.

Regardless of search engine, users were more likely to perform more searches in the morning. People who are looking for more specific answers will click on more results. People who are just browsing typically find things of their interest with fewer key words. People who feel anxious are more likely to more rapidly skim through results, potentially missing results that would have benefitted them. The majority of information is proprietary and therefore inaccessible. For the average individual, the best way to gain information is through anecdotal research, although the accuracy will be disputable. As stated, monetary gain is the main focus of large corporations.

Social Media Use and Depression

The majority of people say that social media use leads to depression. The more accurate phrase is problematic social media use leads to depression. Just like a drug, the user experiences withdrawal effects when not on social media. There is no consensus on the definition of problematic social media use. The main interpretation is what the person thinks is problematic social use.

On social media, such as Instagram, posts may create a feeling of 'I'm not good enough' or 'They are so perfect'. Both contribute to a negative body image. On Twitter and Facebook, the bio may lead individuals to believe that others lead the 'perfect life'. Other effects include seeing others succeed in what the individual has not or is unable to accomplish. All of these factors contribute to depression.

Another major factor is cyberbullying. Unfortunately, much of it goes unreported due to fear. The bully(or bullies) may threaten the individual that they will pursue a certain course of action if the individual does anything. Cyberbullying is not much different to bullying. The main difference is it's online. Online bullying can be harder to detect because the physical evidence may be minimal. Continued bullying that goes unresolved can lead to suicide regardless of the duration. It is entirely possible that an individual commits suicide out of fear and is not at all depressed.

Guilt and shame can result from social media use when already depressed. It can be a self reinforcing cycle. The individual goes to social media for comfort and instead finds content that causes them more distress. This can occur even in individuals who are not depressed. This is significantly more common in girls than boys. This coincides with higher social media use rates by females.

Social media can reinforce judgements about oneself, typically negative judgements. This leads to more anxiety and possibly irrational actions to meet unrealistic expectations. This can cause severe harm to the individual if not addressed. Individuals feel the need to check certain pages regularly to compare, and each time, it's possible they are either still below or perceive as getting more below what the other person has attained.

Connections between life satisfaction and social media use has discovered that less social media use leads to more satisfaction. Social media creates unrealistic expectations of oneself each time they visit social media and therefore maintains their negative cycle is a common explanation. However, it is important to note that less social media time can mean more time with a significant other, friends, or someone else. That can also serve to strengthen connections, therefore leading to greater satisfaction.

FOMO

Fear of missing out is as it sounds: fear of missing out on something. Opposing effects are also shown. FOMO can lead to addiction. It is the cause of excessive social media use and difficulty detaching from social media. Originally branded as a slang term, it is more commonly accepted as standard language. Social media sites have taken advantage of this with notifications. A person can easily be tortured by having the notification sound played on loop. It creates high anxiety due to fear of missing out. Apps do this too. You have a chest to unlock. You have a chest to open. Free rewards. New event open. Each triggers the fear of missing out. Eventually, the notification sound becomes a conditioned stimulus. Turning off notifications may help. Although turning off notifications will reduce the short-term disruptions, it creates more anxiety as there is the belief that they will miss something since they will not be notified. Social media has learned to prey on our anxiety. Rather than focusing on users wellbeing, they are focused on monetary gain.

FOMO can also be associated with clickbait, although the connection is subjective. By not clicking, it creates a fear that they are missing something. It could be of importance. Or it could be interesting. Or it could be something I want to see. That's the argument people in support of this connection make. People who disagree tend to say that there is a different scientific explanation, most times without giving a scientific explanation or any explanation.

Ads

One of the biggest fears of advertisers is ad avoidance. We all know there's a reason behind adblockers. And some adblockers have countermeasures against adblocker blockers. And some sites have countermeasures for those countermeasures! You can see where this is going. In coding, it's quite a mess. But why go to all that trouble? Advertisers know that once you see the ad, the damage is done. More accurately, to your wallet. Advertising seeks to take advantage of your impulsiveness. Often, they use psychological warfare to hijack your decision making. See what I did there? Advertisers often exaggerate to increase the likelihood that their ad will have the desired effect.

Certain colours like red and yellow stimulate hunger. Ever noticed that the logos of the top fast food chains contain one or more colours? McDonalds. Red and yellow. In N Out. Red and yellow. Popeyes. Red. KFC. Red. Chik Fil A. Red. Most advertisements advertising food will use red and yellow.

A catchy phrase or tune will also cement itself inside your head, making it harder to resist. Attention retention is more likely when it's an amazing invention. Rhyming also contributes for getting things stuck in your head. Joy and surprise are the two emotions that advertisers focus on, with some focusing on fear. Such as the fear of spiders. Typically, adverts of pesticides prey on arachnophobia. More surprise typically equals better retention rates. That's why many adverts tend to subvert expectations. It's not magic... or is it? Data suggests the effects may be similar in terms of surprise. Surprise = satisfaction. At least when a creepy clown doesn't come out of the blue.

Advertisements with clowns popping out of nowhere are most common on October 31st. This, along with other ads connected with their respective dates, suggests that advertisers tend to rely on a connection with the date of viewing the ad. This would support the hypothesis that toilet paper ads were more prevalent during the outset of the pandemic. Ads relating to hand sanatiser, Clorox, KleenX, and other products that the pandemic created the need for allowed for aggressive advertising causing more purchasessales than the pandemic alone. Fear makes people buy things. Hence the term panic buying.

Addiction

Addiction is when the individual habitually uses something, in this case the internet, and has difficulty stopping. This includes not being able to stop. Social media addiction is primarily caused by the individual looking for a way to cope and the fact that viewing social media results in dopamine levels rising. Internet addiction is harder to define and there is no clear consensus. However, the consistency is that dopamine levels rise when using and fall when not, causing withdrawal symptoms and 'craving' social media. When likes don't reflect their expectations, they may feel insecure and try to fix that by trying harder, causing them to repeatedly post more and more and spend more and more time on it.. This cycle repeats until it spirals out of control. Addiction is linked to depression in most individuals. Most addicted individuals spend at least ten hours a day on social media. Some individuals who are addicted to the internet as a whole may spend over forty-eight hours at once on the internet. Obviously, sleep deprivation results along with all the side effects of sleep deprivation. It is quite clear the individual is addicted when they prioritise it over sleep. Detox treatments include therapy and limit to screen time. However, detox can lead to depression, and the process must be careful. Addiction is commonly caused by constantly coming short of a goal, such as popularity, likes, views, or some other quantitative measure.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, a lot of information is inaccessible due to the fact that it is proprietary. It is not more research that needs to be done: all the information is there, it just needs to be released. However, that is unlikely to happen. Companies prioritise monetary gain as emphasised in this paper.

What we don't know is most likely covered in the companies' data that is not accessible by the general public. Doing our own research would be difficult due to code in place preventing 'bots' or similar from accessing the site or performing functions on the site. Therefore, third-party analytics are impossible. Unless they have a contract with the company, of course. It would be difficult and time-consuming to duplicate online websites and have mass amounts of users interact with it to study the data. For example: Cloning Facebook would be impossible as the majority of code is back end that we don't have. Even if we had everything on the front end the same, it is not possible to mirror everything on the back end, causing us to be missing important code. Even if we collected data based on hundreds of thousands of voluntary participants' usage, the data may not be accurate as it's not a perfect replica. Creating any sort of experiment would most likely not be worth the time with the current technology we have.

The consistent link between all the factors is that all prey on some aspect of us as individuals. Whether it's our curiosity, fear, surprise, or other emotion, there is some strategy to target it. We are constantly exploited by technology, sometimes without us even knowing it. As mentioned, we many times fall for things that we already know is a trap. Or a trick. Or some kind of misdirection. Our weak ability to resist is proof that technology may have more power over our lives than it should. Large corporations prioritise money. The more power they have over us, the more money they make. We fall victim to that every day, and there is nothing we can do about it. There is no turning back. Today, we constantly rely on technology. It is unlikely that there is not an electronic device nearby anywhere you go in America. Even in rural areas, there may be a radio.

Our emotions take precedence before our rational thinking. We have an innate desire to do something, and many times, we cannot resist although our rational thinking is telling us that we should not. As technology gets more advanced, we may eventually become slaves. And if there's an AI takeover, our emotions will likely be our downfall.

We must be careful that technology does not have beyond a certain extent of control over us. A person could theoretically use technology to manipulate everyone and it would be disastrous if the person had bad intentions. It is important to monitor our emotions and to ensure that social media is not a huge influence.