Contagious: Why Things Catch On (28 page)

out spills fat:
To see the Department of Health’s campaign in action, visit
http://jonahberger.com
.

products associated with the color orange:
Berger and Fitzsimons, “Dogs on the Street,” 1–14.

you’ll notice a neat pattern:
Thanks to Scott A. Golder for providing these data.

3.
Emotion

schlieren photography:
Grady’s article about the cough can be found at Grady, Denise (2008), “The Mysterious Cough, Caught on Film,”
New York Times
, October 27;
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/science/28cough.html
. The
New England Journal of Medicine
article on which her piece is based is Tang, Julian W., and Gary S. Settles (2008), “Coughing and Aerosols,”
New England Journal of Medicine
359, 15.

That doesn’t really tell us much:
Not surprisingly, external factors like where an article was featured also correlated with whether an article made the list. Articles that appeared on the front page of the physical newspaper were shared more than those placed inside. Articles featured at the top of the
Times
home page were shared more than those buried several clicks into the website. Articles written by U2’s Bono or former senator Bob Dole were shared more often than articles written by less famous authors. But these relationships are neither that surprising nor that helpful. Buying a Super Bowl ad or hiring Bono will help increase the chance that content gets viewed and shared. Most people, however, don’t have the funding or personal connections to make those things happen. Instead, we focused on aspects of the content itself that were linked to sharing.

More useful articles:
A full description of our research on
The New York Times
Most E-Mailed list, as well as our findings, can be found in Berger, Jonah, and Katherine Milkman (2012), “What Makes Online Content Viral,”
Journal of Marketing Research
49, no. 2, 192–205.

awe is the sense of wonder:
For a great overview article on awe, see Keltner, D., and J. Haidt (2003), “Approaching Awe, a Moral, Spiritual, and Aesthetic Emotion,”
Cognition and Emotion
, 17, 297–314. For a more recent empirical treatment, see Shiota, M. N., D. Keltner, and A. Mossman (2007), “The Nature of Awe: Elicitors, Appraisals, and Effects on Self-concept,”
Cognition and Emotion
21, 944–63.

“The most beautiful emotion”:
The Einstein quote comes from Ulam, S. M., Françoise Ulam, and Jan Myielski (1976),
Adventures of a Mathematician
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons), 289.

Awe-inspiring articles:
Berger and Milkman, “What Makes Online Content Viral,” 192–205.

Susan Boyle’s first appearance:
Susan Boyle’s performance can be found at
http://jonahberger.com
.

helps deepen our social connection:
For a discussion of how the social sharing of emotion deepens social bonds, see Peters, Kim, and Yoshihasa Kashima (2007), “From Social Talk to Social Action: Shaping the Social Triad with Emotion Sharing,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
93, no. 5, 780–97.

negative content should be more viral:
For a discussion of positive and negative word of mouth, see Godes, Dave, Yubo Chen, Sanjiv Das, Chrysanthos Dellarocas, Bruce Pfeiffer, et al. (2005), “The Firm’s Management of Social Interactions,”
Marketing Letters
16, nos. 3–4, 415–28.

psychologist Jamie Pennebaker:
A discussion of linguistic inquiry and word count can be found in: Pennebaker, James W., Roger J. Booth, and Martha E. Francis (2007), “Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count: LIWC2007,” accessed October 14, 2011;
http://www.liwc.net/
. For a review of how LIWC has been used to study a range of psychological processes, see Pennebaker, James W., Matthias R. Mehl, and Katie Niederhoffer (2003), “Psychological Aspects of Natural Language Use: Our Words, Our Selves,”
Annual Review of Psychology
54, 547–77.

the amount of positivity and negativity:
The greater the percentage of emotional words in a passage of text, the more emotion it tends to express. Pennebaker, J. W., and M. E. Francis (1996), “Cognitive, Emotional, and Language Processes in Disclosure,”
Cognition and Emotion
10, 601–26.

newcomers falling in love with New York City:
Berger and Milkman, “What Makes Online Content Viral,” 192–205.

Articles that evoked anger or anxiety:
Ibid.

physiological arousal:
A great deal of research in psychology has examined the so-called two-dimensional theory of affect (valence and arousal). For discussions, see Barrett, Lisa Feldman, and James A. Russell (1999), “The Structure of Current Affect: Controversies and Emerging Consensus,”
Current Directions in Psychological Science
8, no. 1, 10–14; Christie, I. C., and B. H. Friedman (2004), “Autonomic Specificity of Discrete Emotion and Dimensions of
Affective Space: A Multivariate Approach,”
International Journal of Psychophysiology
51, 143–53; and Schlosberg, H. (1954), “Three Dimensions of Emotion,”
Psychological Review
61, no. 2, 81–88.

This is arousal:
For a discussion of the neurobiology of arousal, see Heilman, K. M. (1997), “The Neurobiology of Emotional Experience,”
Journal of Neuropsychiatry
9, 439–48.

funny content is shared:
The result that arousal boosts social transmission can be found in Berger, Jonah (2011), “Arousal Increases Social Transmission of Information,”
Psychological Science
22, no. 7, 891–93.

While traveling to a gig:
A summary of Dave Carroll’s odyssey with United Airlines can be found in his book: Carroll, Dave (2012),
United Breaks Guitars: The Power of One Voice in the Age of Social Media
(Carlsbad, CA: Hay House). To hear the actual song, go to
http://jonahberger.com
.

The clip tells a budding love story:
A clip of “Parisian Love” can be viewed at
http://jonahberger.com
. The story behind “Parisian Love” came from an interview with Anthony Cafaro on June 20, 2012.

“The best results don’t show up in a search engine”:
The quote came from Iezzi, Teressa (2010), “Meet the Google Five,”
http://creativity-online.com/news/the-google-creative-lab/146084
.

Simply adding more arousal:
Berger and Milkman, “What Makes Online Content Viral,” 192–205.

obesity reduces life expectancy:
The statistic about obesity came from Whitlock, Gary, Sarah Lewington, Paul Sherliker, and Richard Peto (2009), “Body-mass Index and Mortality,”
The Lancet
374, no. 9684, 114.

disgust is a highly arousing emotion:
For a discussion of how disgust affects social transmission, see Heath, Chip, Chris Bell, and Emily Sternberg (2001), “Emotional Selection in Memes: The Case of Urban Legends,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
81, no. 6, 1028–41.

the practice strengthens the maternal bond:
To learn more about baby-wearing and attachment, see
www.attachmentparenting.org
.

the company created an ad centered on the aches:
To see a clip of the Motrin ad, see
http://jonahberger.com
.

the marketing debacle:
Learmonth, Michael (2008), “How Twittering Critics Brought Down Motrin Mom Campaign: Bloggers Ignite Brush Fire over Weekend, Forcing J&J to Pull Ads, Issue Apology,”
AdAge.com
, November 17, retrieved from
http://adage.com/article/digital/twittering-critics-brought-motrin-mom-campaign/132622
.

4.
Public

Ken Segall was Steve Jobs’s right hand man:
All taken from my interview with Ken Segall on May, 15, 2012. For more information on Ken’s work with Apple, see Segall (2012),
Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success
(New York: Portfolio/Penguin).

If lots of people are eating there:
For an economist’s take on this issue, see Becker, Gary S. (1991), “A Note on Restaurant Pricing and Other Examples of Social Influence on Price,”
Journal of Political Economy
99, no. 3, 1109–16.

pick entrées preferred by other diners:
For evidence of social influence in entrée choice, see Cai, Hongbi, Yuyu Chen, and Hanming Fang (2009), “Observational Learning: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Field Experiment,”
American Economic Review
99, no. 3, 864–82. For research on conformity in hotel towel use, see Goldstein, Noah J., Robert B. Cialdini, and Vladas Griskevicius (2008), “A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels,”
Journal of Consumer Research
35, 472–82. Similar approaches have also been applied to get people to reduce home energy consumption.

People are more likely to vote:
For evidence of social influence in voter turnout, see Nickerson, David W. (2008), “Is Voting Contagious? Evidence from Two Field Experiments,”
American Political Science Review
102, 49–57. For a discussion of how social influence may affect obesity and smoking cessation, see Christakis, Nicholas A., and James Fowler (2009),
Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives
(New York: Little, Brown, and Company).

what brand of coffee to buy:
For evidence of social influence in coffee choice, see Burnkrant, Robert E., and Alain Cousineau (1975), “Informational and Normative Social Influence in Buyer Behavior,”
Journal of Consumer Research
2, 206–15. For evidence of social influence in paying taxes, see Thaler, Richard (2012), “Watching Behavior Before Writing the Rules,”
New York Times
, July 12, retrieved from
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/business/behavioral-science-can-help-guide-policy-economic-view.html
.

people are more likely to laugh:
For evidence about social influence in laughter, see Provine, R. R. (1992), “Contagious Laughter: Laughter
Is a Sufficient Stimulus for Laughs and Smiles,”
Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society
30, 1–4.

“social proof”:
Cialdini, Robert B. (2001),
Influence: Science and Practice
(Needham Heights, Mass.: Allyn & Bacon).

when she looked at hundreds of kidney donations:
The findings from Juanjuan’s clever paper, as well as assorted statistics about kidney failure and donation, can be found at Zhang, Juanjuan (2010), “The Sound of Silence: Observational Learning in the U.S. Kidney Market,”
Marketing Science
29, no. 2, 315–35.

Koreen Johannessen started:
Interview with Koreen Johannessen on June 21, 2012.

college students . . . report drinking alcohol:
For some statistics about college students’ binge drinking, see Weschler, Henry, and Toben F. Nelson (2008), “What We Have Learned from the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study: Focusing Attention on College Student Alcohol Consumption and the Environmental Conditions That Promote It,”
Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs
69, 481–90. Also see Hingson, Ralph, Timothy Heeren, Michael Winter, and Henry Wechsler (2005), “Magnitude of Alcohol-Related Mortality and Morbidity Among U.S. College Students Ages 18–24: Changes from 1998 to 2001,”
Annual Review of Public Health
, 26, 259–79, and
http://www.alcohol101plus.org/downloads/collegestudents.pdf
.

how they felt about drinking:
Psychologists use the term “pluralistic ignorance” to talk about this issue. Pluralistic ignorance refers to a case where most people in a group privately reject a norm (such as drinking a lot) but incorrectly assume that others accept it, in part because they can see others’ behavior but not their thoughts. For a broader discussion, see Prentice, Deborah A., and Dale T. Miller (1993), “Pluralistic Ignorance and Alcohol Use on Campus: Some Consequences of Misperceiving the Social Norm,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
64, no. 2, 243–56.

A restaurant might be extremely popular:
This is why the maître d’ will often seat the first few arrivals near the window at the front of the restaurant. As a funny side note, there is a place in New York City that I always assumed was extremely popular because it has benches outside that were always full. I assumed that the people sitting on them were waiting to eat. Only later did I realize that they may have been sitting there because it was a convenient place to rest for a few minutes.

1.5 million car sales:
For the full story on our automobile research,
see McShane, Blakely, Eric T. Bradlow, and Jonah Berger (2012), “Visual Influence and Social Groups,”
Journal of Marketing Research
, (forthcoming). Also see Grinblatt, M., M. Keloharrju, and S. Ikaheimo (2008), “Social Influence and Consumption: Evidence from the Automobile Purchases of Neighbors,”
The Review of Economics and Statistics
90, no. 4, 735–53.

The easier something is to see:
For evidence about how public visibility affects word of mouth, see Berger, Jonah, and Eric Schwartz (2011), “What Drives Immediate and Ongoing Word of Mouth?”
Journal of Marketing Research
48, no. 5, 869–80.

cancer claims the lives:
For statistics about how cancer affects men, see
http://www.cdc.gov/features/cancerandmen/
and
http://www.wcrf.org/cancer_statistics/world_cancer_statistics.php
.