I don't think it is, and here's why. (Off-Topic)

by Funkmon , Friday, March 04, 2016, 19:08 (3192 days ago) @ marmot 1333
edited by Funkmon, Friday, March 04, 2016, 19:19

The results indicate that content is more likely to become viral the more positive it is (Table 4, Model 1)....positive content is more viral than negative content.

The entire video is built on a particular finding by a study linked to in the youtube video. The above quote is from that study.

I would wager CGPGrey had a hypothesis going into this and used a particular element from the study while ignoring the study's conclusions. He also ignored a later study by the same authors replicating these findings, with a better design in a more prestigious publication. Perhaps it's because of the objects being studied, journal articles rather than NYT articles, but I'd bet it's because they don't show a graph with "anger."

The anger part of the study came from participants being asked to read a story about a negative customer service experience. All other aspects were controlled for, the difference was that one version of the article was designed to make the reader more angry. The more angry a person was, the more likely he was to share the story. This is consistent with their central hypothesis, that emotions invoked are positively correlated with sharing frequency. So, in other words, it's better to be positive than negative, but any emotion works. So angry gets people to share more than nothing or sadness, but that's all that can be determined by that study.

The study itself is an all right design, and is rigorous. CGPGrey just cherry picked data and heavily implied negativity gets shared more, even explicitly stating angry content gets shared more, when the studies showed the exact opposite.

I'll quote the authors again, in a review of their studies from last year.

This means that content that makes readers or viewers feel a positive emotion like awe or wonder is more likely to take off online than content that makes people feel sad or angry.

Do you think it's "good enough?" I sure don't.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2013137_code502159.pdf?abstractid=1528077&mirid=1
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/Supplement_4/13642.full.pdf
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-secret-to-online-success-what-makes-content-go-viral/