A secret psychological experiment over emotions of hundreds of thousands of Facebook users was carried out by a scientist financed by the US Department of Defense. This information caused a rush of indignation in social networks. Researchers turned people into guinea pigs without their knowledge or consent, informs Russia Today.
Psychologists carried out a social experiment changing posts in Facebook users' news feed to find out how other people's emotions affect authors of the postings. According to the SCG News, the research is related to the Pentagon project named Minerva Initiative. Within its framework various universities receive financing for a large-scale research of public opinions, dispositions and concerns all over the world.
Minerva Initiative, as its web site reports, cooperates with research teams in 32 universities, four of which are outside the US. It is pointed out that $6mln will be spent within the project framework in 2014 and $17mln is provided for the next three years.
As was reported earlier, Facebook carried out an experiment changing the number of positive or negative postings in the news feed. Direct proportion was discovered: the more positive the atmosphere around the more positive postings on the users' web sites.
About 700,000 people were involved in Facebook manipulations without knowing about it. The experiment lasted for a week in January 2012. Users' news feeds were modified by research workers of a magazine published by the US National Academy of Sciences.
Though the rate of positive entries grew by 0.1% only when the news feeds were edited, the effect is considerable because the number of Facebook users has reached 1.3bln people.
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