Learn to Love by Tweeting Madly
Social Networking Affects Brains Like Falling in Love Neuroeconomist Paul Zak has discovered, for the first time, that social networking triggers the release of the generosity-trust chemical in our brains.
EXPERIMENT No. 3: In Which I Learn to Love by Tweeting Madly
By Adam L. Penenberg
Zak greets me at his lab near the Claremont campus, a three-bedroom house being converted into a spacious new lab. To escape the hammering, yammering workers, he escorts me upstairs to a study where a nurse awaits. She compliments me on my veins and draws blood. Then she and Zak leave me alone. I pull up TweetDeck on my laptop and get to work. The question is simple: Will social networking increase my levels of oxytocin? Will my brain react to tweeting as it reacts to, say, a dinner conversation with good friends?
I start tweeting and alert my followers that I'm engaging in a Twitter experiment with a neuroeconomist. I update a previous remark I made about the GPS in my rental car and how the automated voice gets uppity whenever I miss a turn. Responding to a woman I've never met, I type in the language of 140-character Twitterese: "I want Mr. T GPS voice! How abt James Earl Jones? He says turn left you *turn* left. Or Norah Jones? Plaintive directions." Another person I've never met asks my opinion of an infamous journalist, and I answer as best I can. Responding to a former editor, I joke about overweight tourists in Speedos grabbing plum spots on Greek beaches. Some of my "tweeps" respond to my post about the experiment, and I field questions from a couple of New York University students I've taught. And then the nurse returns to take some blood, ending the experiment. I leave wondering whether anything of value could come of such a short, typical, and somewhat dull dip into my tweet stream.
Yet six weeks later, when Zak shares the results with me, my blood tells a more dramatic story. In those 10 minutes between blood batches one and two, my oxytocin levels spiked 13.2%. That's equivalent to the hormonal spike experienced by the groom at the wedding Zak attended.Meanwhile, stress hormones cortisol and ACTH went down 10.8% and 14.9%, respectively. Zak explains that the results are linked, that the release of oxytocin I experienced while tweeting reduced my stress hormones. If that's the case, says Zak, social networking might reduce cardiovascular risks, like heart attack and stroke, associated with lack of social support. But there's even more to our findings. "Your brain interpreted tweeting as if you were directly interacting with people you cared about or had empathy for," Zak says. "E-connection is processed in the brain like an in-person connection."
Other studies support this idea. One Australian experiment discovered that people with a sizable network of friends were less likely to pass away over a 10-year period than those with a small circle of friends -- and that the distance separating friends made no difference. Another study showed that people with friends get sick less often than those without. Again, proximity didn't affect the result. Two researchers from Washington University in St. Louis scanned the brains of fiction readers and discovered that their test subjects created intense, graphic mental simulations of the sights, sounds, movements, and tastes they encountered in the narrative. In essence, their brains reacted as if they were actually living the events they were reading about.
"Your brain interpreted tweeting as if you were directly interacting with people you cared about or had empathy for," Zak says. "E-connection is processed in the brain like an in-person connection."
Not surprisingly, studies like these have their critics. Predictably Irrational's Ariely, a Duke University economics professor who is a friendly rival of Zak's, believes neuroeconomics has been "overhyped" because "if you look at the amount of money invested into it, there has not been a very good return." He's particularly critical of studies that rely on MRIs, which he says are not definitive. Of Zak's work on oxytocin, however, Ariely is "a big fan," since it "allows you to see quite clearly what the mechanism is" that drives human behavior.
But Zak is talking about more than just individual human behavior. His research has always led to greater conclusions. His dissertation looked at factors that might accelerate poverty or prosperity in developing countries. He found that nations with a high level of trust (Norway, Sweden, the United States) have higher income levels and more stable governments than those that don't. Their citizenry possess higher levels of "social capital," which depends on positive interactions between people, on a level of trust created by low crime, better education, and greater economic development. He concluded that trust was the variable that showed whether a society was working well, and when it did, the economy would take off on its own.The speed with which social media can affect a company's "trust factor" may lead to a new focus on what Richard Laermer, CEO of RLM Public Relations in New York and author of several books on viral marketing, calls "horizontal growth." In other words, "instead of pushing for new customers, focus on your current customers," he says. "If they have a positive interaction with customer service, or love your product, they'll tell other people and do your marketing for you, which will attract new customers."
For instance, I'm an iPhone user, and am therefore tethered to AT&T whether I like it or not. (I don't.) I have often flambéed AT&T for its rickety 3G network, which often drops calls. Recently, however, I softened my stance after returning from a short trip to Toronto. An AT&T customer-service rep informed me I had racked up hundreds of dollars in roaming charges because I had neglected to protect myself with an international-travel package. She offered to retroactively apply one for $24.99, which effectively wiped the slate clean. You can bet I tweeted my happiness.
Contributing writer Adam L. Penenberg is the author of Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today's Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves. Photographs by Bryce Duffyhttp://www.fastcompany.com/
EXPERIMENT No. 3: In Which I Learn to Love by Tweeting Madly
By Adam L. Penenberg Zak greets me at his lab near the Claremont campus, a three-bedroom house being converted into a spacious new lab. To escape the hammering, yammering workers, he escorts me upstairs to a study where a nurse awaits. She compliments me on my veins and draws blood. Then she and Zak leave me alone. I pull up TweetDeck on my laptop and get to work. The question is simple: Will social networking increase my levels of oxytocin? Will my brain react to tweeting as it reacts to, say, a dinner conversation with good friends?
I start tweeting and alert my followers that I'm engaging in a Twitter experiment with a neuroeconomist. I update a previous remark I made about the GPS in my rental car and how the automated voice gets uppity whenever I miss a turn. Responding to a woman I've never met, I type in the language of 140-character Twitterese: "I want Mr. T GPS voice! How abt James Earl Jones? He says turn left you *turn* left. Or Norah Jones? Plaintive directions." Another person I've never met asks my opinion of an infamous journalist, and I answer as best I can. Responding to a former editor, I joke about overweight tourists in Speedos grabbing plum spots on Greek beaches. Some of my "tweeps" respond to my post about the experiment, and I field questions from a couple of New York University students I've taught. And then the nurse returns to take some blood, ending the experiment. I leave wondering whether anything of value could come of such a short, typical, and somewhat dull dip into my tweet stream.Yet six weeks later, when Zak shares the results with me, my blood tells a more dramatic story. In those 10 minutes between blood batches one and two, my oxytocin levels spiked 13.2%. That's equivalent to the hormonal spike experienced by the groom at the wedding Zak attended.Meanwhile, stress hormones cortisol and ACTH went down 10.8% and 14.9%, respectively. Zak explains that the results are linked, that the release of oxytocin I experienced while tweeting reduced my stress hormones. If that's the case, says Zak, social networking might reduce cardiovascular risks, like heart attack and stroke, associated with lack of social support. But there's even more to our findings. "Your brain interpreted tweeting as if you were directly interacting with people you cared about or had empathy for," Zak says. "E-connection is processed in the brain like an in-person connection."
Other studies support this idea. One Australian experiment discovered that people with a sizable network of friends were less likely to pass away over a 10-year period than those with a small circle of friends -- and that the distance separating friends made no difference. Another study showed that people with friends get sick less often than those without. Again, proximity didn't affect the result. Two researchers from Washington University in St. Louis scanned the brains of fiction readers and discovered that their test subjects created intense, graphic mental simulations of the sights, sounds, movements, and tastes they encountered in the narrative. In essence, their brains reacted as if they were actually living the events they were reading about.
"Your brain interpreted tweeting as if you were directly interacting with people you cared about or had empathy for," Zak says. "E-connection is processed in the brain like an in-person connection."
Not surprisingly, studies like these have their critics. Predictably Irrational's Ariely, a Duke University economics professor who is a friendly rival of Zak's, believes neuroeconomics has been "overhyped" because "if you look at the amount of money invested into it, there has not been a very good return." He's particularly critical of studies that rely on MRIs, which he says are not definitive. Of Zak's work on oxytocin, however, Ariely is "a big fan," since it "allows you to see quite clearly what the mechanism is" that drives human behavior.But Zak is talking about more than just individual human behavior. His research has always led to greater conclusions. His dissertation looked at factors that might accelerate poverty or prosperity in developing countries. He found that nations with a high level of trust (Norway, Sweden, the United States) have higher income levels and more stable governments than those that don't. Their citizenry possess higher levels of "social capital," which depends on positive interactions between people, on a level of trust created by low crime, better education, and greater economic development. He concluded that trust was the variable that showed whether a society was working well, and when it did, the economy would take off on its own.The speed with which social media can affect a company's "trust factor" may lead to a new focus on what Richard Laermer, CEO of RLM Public Relations in New York and author of several books on viral marketing, calls "horizontal growth." In other words, "instead of pushing for new customers, focus on your current customers," he says. "If they have a positive interaction with customer service, or love your product, they'll tell other people and do your marketing for you, which will attract new customers."
For instance, I'm an iPhone user, and am therefore tethered to AT&T whether I like it or not. (I don't.) I have often flambéed AT&T for its rickety 3G network, which often drops calls. Recently, however, I softened my stance after returning from a short trip to Toronto. An AT&T customer-service rep informed me I had racked up hundreds of dollars in roaming charges because I had neglected to protect myself with an international-travel package. She offered to retroactively apply one for $24.99, which effectively wiped the slate clean. You can bet I tweeted my happiness.
Contributing writer Adam L. Penenberg is the author of Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today's Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves. Photographs by Bryce Duffyhttp://www.fastcompany.com/
Labels: science, Social Media
posted by i dont think so @ 24.6.10
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