And the key is in our brain. A study carried out by the Annenberg School of Communication of the University of Pennsylvania (USA) has revealed the unknown capable of elucidating the virality of an Internet content: according to the brain activity of the reader.
To carry out the study, they had the participation of 80 people whose brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging , while they read 80 articles of similar length related to health and published in the New York Times newspaper. The volunteers had to assess their interest in reading the articles and sharing them while the researchers carried out the measurements.
“ People read or share content that connects with their own experiences, with their sense of who they are or want to become. They share things that can improve their relationships, make them seem smarter or empathetic, “ says Emily Falk, co-author of the work.
After analyzing the neural data, the scientists explained that when people choose something to read or to share or recommend to others, they think both of themselves and of others, showing the highest levels of activity in these neural systems.
“ When you think about what you are going to read and what you are going to share, both are inherently social thoughts, and when you think socially, you tend to think of yourself and your relationship with others. The social world and your concept of yourself are intertwined “, comments Elisa Baek, co-author of the work.
Virality
Using the brain activity data from the same participants and the same articles, the experts were able to predict the virality of a text among the set of New York Times readers who shared that group of content a total of 117,611 times. The key is that the brain activity of the studied regions was combined, unconsciously, generating a signal that gave a certain value to the article, a signal that indicates what is going to be shared and what is not.
“ In practice, if you create a message that the reader believes will make them perceive more positively or that it can improve a relationship, we can predict that the probability of that message being shared is going to grow, “ explains Christin Scholz, also a co-author of the work.
The results have been published in the journals Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and Psychological Science.
