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In this era of "incite outrage-at-the-moment-to-get-that-click" clickbait news and postings pushed to us by mainstream media and social networks, is it a wonder that society is in the current state that its in..?
This article at NPR states that even if you're not aware of it, it's likely that your emotions will influence someone around you today. This can happen during our most basic exchanges, say on your commute to work. "If someone smiles at you, you smile back at them," says sociologist Nicholas Christakis of Yale University. "That's a very fleeting contagion of emotion from one person to another."
But it doesn't stop there. Emotions can spread through social networks almost like the flu or a cold. And, the extent to which emotions can cascade is eye-opening.
For instance, Christakis' research has shown that if you start to become happier with your life, a friend living close by has a 25 percent higher chance of becoming happy too. And your partner is more likely to feel better as well. The happiness can even spread to people to whom you're indirectly connected.
To document this, Christakis and his colleagues mapped out the face-to-face interactions of about 5,000 people living in one town, over the course of 32 years. Their emotional ups and downs were documented with periodic surveys. "We were able to show that as one person became happy or sad, it rippled through the network," Christakis says.
It's not just happiness that spreads, unhappiness and anger can be contagious, too. Should negative-clickbait be banned as a social threat?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 25 2019, @10:37PM
Depends on the locale. Jews support refugees more than normal because they were recently refugees themselves. The wounds are still fresh.
But in areas where there are few if any Jews you'll see any other religion pick up the slack and where people aren't particularly religious then local community action groups will step in.
Refugees are refugees, they would be stateless if there was no place to take them in. The color of their skin doesn't matter. The place they are from doesn't matter.
What matters is that if you remove a 1/16th of an inch of skin we all look the same, we bleed the same color. Just treat them how you'd like your children / grandchildren treated. Because when the time comes believe me, the karmic debt will be repaid.