Why do we love tweets and Facebook posts so much? Is there any science to explain that?
A recent survey of Internet use, by Naaman, Boase and Lai entitled "Is it really about me?: Message content in social awareness streams" in the Proceedings of the 2010 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work demonstrated that about 80% of our FB posts and tweets are simply announcements of our own immediate experiences. The same is true when we talk to others; Dunbar, Marriott and Duncan, in "Human Conversational Behavior" published in Human Nature, as well two papers by Emler "Gossip, Reputation and Social Adaptation", and "A Social Psychology of Reputation", as well as other researchers, have demonstrated that in everyday conversation at least 30 - 40% of our speaking is about ourselves. Why is it "all about ME"?
Why do we do that? Is it just our egos functioning? Is there something operating in the brain that causes us to behave in such a "me"-focused manner? we clearly want to share our thoughts and feelings with others, but c'mon, 80% of internet social networking and 40% of personal conversation?
The most recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), arguably one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed, open literature publications, had an excellent article that gives some new insights entitled "Disclosing Information About the Self Is Intrinsically Rewarding" by Diana Tamir and Jason Mitchell, of Harvard.
Of all animals, none is so focused, starting at about 9 mos old, to begin drawing the attention of others to what they find important in their environment. The predominance of this tendency indicates that there must be something neurological in that behavior, and that it must have conferred some Darwinianly-selected evolutionary advantages. Tamir and Mitchell combined neuroimaging and cognitive behavioral methods to study this behavior.
Previous work has generally shown that the mesolimbic dopamine system, which includes the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and the ventral tegmental area (VTA), is used to give a dopamine "reward" for food, humor, gaining social acceptance for your ideas, seeing an attractive member of the opposite sex and getting "money" to get these. This is distinguished from the serotonin system and its functions as shown in the figure.
Previous psychological testing on macaque monkeys demonstrated that they would trade lots of juice for a look at a dominant male. University students, similarly, would trade a significant amount of money for a brief view of an attractive member of the opposite sex. (No additional comment is necessary here - i know many university students, i even was one.)
In initial fMRI studies, the two key elements of the dopamine system, the NAcc and VTA, were found to have much higher activation (put out more dopamine) when folk were disclosing beliefs about their own opinions and personality traits than when they were judging those in others, i.e. myself-related behaviors were rewarded with dopamine. They also found that when money was given as a reward vs when no money was used, the NAcc was more activated, indicating that dopamine was providing the "reward".
For the main part of the study, participants chose between 3 tasks,
a) reporting their own opinions and attitudes,
b) judging the attitudes of others, e.g. how much does Brad Pitt enjoy winter sports such as skiing?,
c) a trivia fact, e.g. Picasso painted the Mona Lisa, true or false?
Each choice had a reward of 1 to 4 cents (c'mon Harvard...4 cents?).
This approach has been cleverly developed to have some way to quantitatively value the subjective preference for one task over another. Rather than, "love it", "like it a lot", (tks Netflix), we now have reward-based, relative numbers which can be analyzed.
Bottom line, participants were willing to give up a lot of reward just to talk about themselves, task a), rather than the other two tasks, b) and c).
The next step was to test if disclosing choices a) or b) in different formats was different, i.e. if they were consciously shared with to a friend or relative, or just kept private. Participants showed a consistent preference for answering questions about themselves, which was increased when they knew there was another person they were sharing it with who knew them.
Why would this behavior be evolutionarily advantageous? The theory is that the tendency to broadcast one's thoughts and beliefs may convey an evolutionary advantage in individuals by:
a) engendering social bonds and social alliances
b) getting feedback from others to enhance self-knowledge
c) taking advantage of performance advantages that may result from sharing one's sensory experience
d) reducing the need to discover by themselves what others already know so that one can accumulate more knowledge
This ability to disclose information about ourselves, and our internal thoughts and knowledge, to others around us may play a critical role in sustaining the highly-evolved social nature of our species.
So when you get that "rush" or "good feeling" when you do a FB post or tweet, it's really "no problem". It's just your evolutionarily-developed dopamine response system in your nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area rewarding you for "engendering social bonds and social alliances" and "enhancing your self knowledge".
A recent survey of Internet use, by Naaman, Boase and Lai entitled "Is it really about me?: Message content in social awareness streams" in the Proceedings of the 2010 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work demonstrated that about 80% of our FB posts and tweets are simply announcements of our own immediate experiences. The same is true when we talk to others; Dunbar, Marriott and Duncan, in "Human Conversational Behavior" published in Human Nature, as well two papers by Emler "Gossip, Reputation and Social Adaptation", and "A Social Psychology of Reputation", as well as other researchers, have demonstrated that in everyday conversation at least 30 - 40% of our speaking is about ourselves. Why is it "all about ME"?
Why do we do that? Is it just our egos functioning? Is there something operating in the brain that causes us to behave in such a "me"-focused manner? we clearly want to share our thoughts and feelings with others, but c'mon, 80% of internet social networking and 40% of personal conversation?
 |
| Diana Tamir |
Of all animals, none is so focused, starting at about 9 mos old, to begin drawing the attention of others to what they find important in their environment. The predominance of this tendency indicates that there must be something neurological in that behavior, and that it must have conferred some Darwinianly-selected evolutionary advantages. Tamir and Mitchell combined neuroimaging and cognitive behavioral methods to study this behavior.
 |
| Dopamine Serotinin Systems |
Previous psychological testing on macaque monkeys demonstrated that they would trade lots of juice for a look at a dominant male. University students, similarly, would trade a significant amount of money for a brief view of an attractive member of the opposite sex. (No additional comment is necessary here - i know many university students, i even was one.)
 |
| NAcc shown by arrows in fMRI Left bars - Opinions Right bars - Personality Traits |
In initial fMRI studies, the two key elements of the dopamine system, the NAcc and VTA, were found to have much higher activation (put out more dopamine) when folk were disclosing beliefs about their own opinions and personality traits than when they were judging those in others, i.e. myself-related behaviors were rewarded with dopamine. They also found that when money was given as a reward vs when no money was used, the NAcc was more activated, indicating that dopamine was providing the "reward".
For the main part of the study, participants chose between 3 tasks,
a) reporting their own opinions and attitudes,
b) judging the attitudes of others, e.g. how much does Brad Pitt enjoy winter sports such as skiing?,
c) a trivia fact, e.g. Picasso painted the Mona Lisa, true or false?
Each choice had a reward of 1 to 4 cents (c'mon Harvard...4 cents?).
This approach has been cleverly developed to have some way to quantitatively value the subjective preference for one task over another. Rather than, "love it", "like it a lot", (tks Netflix), we now have reward-based, relative numbers which can be analyzed.
 |
| Relative Monetary Value Judgments Self, Other and Fact |
 |
| Relative Monetary Value Judgments Shared and Private, Self and Other |
Why would this behavior be evolutionarily advantageous? The theory is that the tendency to broadcast one's thoughts and beliefs may convey an evolutionary advantage in individuals by:
a) engendering social bonds and social alliances
b) getting feedback from others to enhance self-knowledge
c) taking advantage of performance advantages that may result from sharing one's sensory experience
d) reducing the need to discover by themselves what others already know so that one can accumulate more knowledge
This ability to disclose information about ourselves, and our internal thoughts and knowledge, to others around us may play a critical role in sustaining the highly-evolved social nature of our species.
So when you get that "rush" or "good feeling" when you do a FB post or tweet, it's really "no problem". It's just your evolutionarily-developed dopamine response system in your nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area rewarding you for "engendering social bonds and social alliances" and "enhancing your self knowledge".
Getting some dopamine.
ReplyDeleteI just have to Tweet this ;)
ReplyDeleteHi Lou,
DeleteJust don't get addicted to it. ;)
stillness
Hi Lou,
DeleteOh, and BTW, you might find the recent blogpost "How the changing brain turns our pleasures into addictions..." interesting as well. Discussions on research on addictions to social media, sex, drugs, running, yoga, etc.
stillness