Emotional selection in memes: The case of urban legends.
Abstract
This article explores how much memes like urban legends succeed on the basis of informational selection (i.e., truth or a moral lesson) and emotional selection (i.e., the ability to evoke emotions like anger, fear, or disgust). The article focuses on disgust because its elicitors have been precisely described. In Study 1, with controls for informational factors like truth, people were more willing to pass along stories that elicited stronger disgust. Study 2 randomly sampled legends and created versions that varied in disgust; people preferred to pass along versions that produced the highest level of disgust. Study 3 coded legends for specific story motifs that produce disgust (e.g., ingestion of a contaminated substance) and found that legends that contained more disgust motifs were distributed more widely on urban legend Web sites. The conclusion discusses implications of emotional selection for the social marketplace of ideas.
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Previous work has investigated the general role of emotion in the diffusion of messages.
“Whereas previous work has investigated the general role of emotion in the diffusion of messages (18,19)”
From Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks (2017) · cites this paper as [19]
Nonmoral emotions had a unique impact on social transmission for two out of three topics.
“We also observed that nonmoral emotions had a unique impact on social transmission for two out of three topics, replicating prior work demonstrating the impact of emotion on online diffusion (18,19).”
From Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks (2017) · cites this paper as [19]
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- Authors
- Heath, C., Bell, C., & Sternberg, E.
- Affiliations
- Stanford University (US)
- Venue
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
- Published
- 2001-12
- Volume
- 81
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1028-1041
- ISSN
- 0022-3514 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-1315
- OpenAlex
- W4244541774
- Cited by
- 588
- References
- 38
- Citations by year
- 2026: 15 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 39 · 2023: 26 · 2022: 35 · 2021: 45 · 2020: 33 · 2019: 43 · 2018: 32 · 2017: 35 · 2016: 22 · 2015: 30 · 2014: 30 · 2013: 27 · 2012: 31
- FWCI
- 9.88
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Humor Studies and Applications
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies
- Keywords
- urban legends, memes, emotional contagion, emotional arousal
- MeSH terms
- Affect, Choice Behavior, Humans, Mythology, Psychological Theory, Social Environment, Urbanization
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