The Facebook experiment

Facebook has recently been criticized of conducting experiments on their users that altered their moods without letting them know.

What Facebook Team did is they tested how the negative and positive posts in the news feed affected people's emotions. They first reduced the amount of positive status in the news feed by eliminating certain Random posts.

The result was that those who got exposed to less positive posts wrote more negative statements during that period! (see also How negative words affect your life)

After that the Facebook team reduced the number of negative posts in the news feed for some users and what happened is that those users wrote more positive posts during that period.

Do you know what does this mean? It means that both positivity and negativity and contagious. When people got exposed to more positive messages their moods improved but when they got exposed to more negative ones they felt worse. (see also How negative words turn into beliefs)

How People infect you with their moods

I my articles about NLP i discussed the concept of anchors and how can one event remind you of another when the first occurs. Ever smelled a perfume then remembered a period of time when you used to put it?

Ever saw something then remembered something else that is related to it?

This is how anchors work and this is how your mind organizes information. Every single piece of information inside your mind is connected to so many other pieces. If any piece that is related to some other ones was introduced to you then you will quickly remember all the other related ones.

In the Super powers course i said that when someone says anything negative your mind will immediately recall all the events related to that negative statement. One negative statement won't necessarily change your mood but as you keep getting exposed to more negative words you will eventually start to feel bad.

After all we all have emotional wounds and once we come across a negative statement that reminds us of one of our wounds then we will certainly feel bad.

It doesn't have to be a negative phrase

Some people think that in order for their moods to change they must get exposed to a clear negative message but that's not always the case.

Sometimes a subtle cue that only your subconscious mind notices can totally ruin your mood. If for example you feel guilty about over eating then an image of an athletic body might actually make you feel sad because it will unconsciously remind you of your guilt.

In other words whatever you get exposed to greatly affects your mood whether it was negative or positive. So how can someone protect his mood from others?

Because we understood that problem long ago the to know myself team has created a project that can help you fight negativity and stay positive. We created Optimist net a place where you can get exposed to so many positive messages each day to counter the effect of the negative statements you get exposed to.

By getting exposed to positive messages more often the effect of the negative messages on your brain and mood will be greatly reduced.