The Facebook emotional-contagion experiment
🔬 Achieved by science
Facebook data science · Cornell · UCSF (PNAS 2014) · 689,003 users worldwide · 2012 (published 2014)
Without clear notice, it manipulated the ratio of positive/negative content in feeds for a week and found users’ own posts shifted emotionally.
VerdictProved emotions can be manipulated remotely at scale; huge ethical controversy.
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DMILS: remotely influencing another’s physiology
🎓 Academic research
Mind Science Foundation · Braud & Schlitz · USA, San Antonio · 1980s–1990s
A ‘sender’ in an isolated room tried to relax or arouse a distant subject while their skin conductance was recorded; meta-analyses report a small effect.
VerdictNot mainstream-accepted, with a strong experimenter effect (see Wiseman × Schlitz).
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Mirror-touch synaesthesia
🎓 Academic research
UCL Banissy & Ward (Nature Neuroscience 2007) · UK · 2007
~1.6% of people feel real touch on their own body when they see someone else touched; they score significantly higher on empathy scales.
VerdictPhysiological ‘empathy’ exists — but only senses, doesn’t manipulate.
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HeartMath heart-field & emotion-synchrony research
📜 On record
HeartMath Institute · USA, California · 1991–present
Claims the heart’s electromagnetic field is detectable feet away by another’s nervous system and that emotional coherence can be ‘contagious’.
VerdictMostly in-house research; the mainstream is reserved.
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