What goes viral on social media vs. what people want to go viral
What does vs should go viral on social media, social and behavioral science research proliferated during the covid pandemic, and our lab's newest PhD, Dr. Steve Rathje!
Steve thought he'd be an actor or playwright. But, when Steve took an Introduction to Psychology class during the first quarter of his undergraduate degree at Stanford, he became fascinated by the prospect of using the scientific method (rather than the arts) to understand the human experience, and decided to major in Psychology. Steve's duel interests in theatre and psychology led him to start conducting psychology research in Jamil Zaki's lab about the psychological effects of attending live theatre. He found that attending live theatre improves empathy, changes attitudes, and leads to pro-social behavior.
Steve began his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2018 as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, working primarily with Sander van der Linden. There, Steve built on his interest in political psychology, and became especially interested in the role of social media in politics. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he saw how the world became increasingly dependent on social media. Additionally, he became a psychology TikToker at the end of 2020, which gave him firsthand experience with the strangeness of the online world.
Steve's interests turned to political psychology after he started writing popular science articles about political psychology research toward the end of his undergraduate, partly as a way to process what happened in the 2016 election. One of these articles was about Jay Van Bavel's Identity-Based Model of Political Belief, which lead him to become interested in the research from the Social Identity and Morality Lab.
During Steve's PhD, he conducted research about how out-group animosity drives virality on social media, how certain ways of using social media are correlated with vaccine hesitancy, and how motivating people to be accurate (for, through instance, providing people with financial incentives) can improve people's ability to correctly discern between true and false news headlines. His latest paper examines what goes viral on social media—and how this radically differs from what people want to go viral (see description of this research below).
On Oct. 13, Steve Rathje passed his PhD and officially became a doctor! For Steve's postdoctoral research in the Social Identity & Morality Lab, he plans to conduct online field experiments that examine the causal impact of following (or unfollowing) certain influencers on social media, in addition to conducting cross-cultural studies about the differential effects of social media around the world.
And…to become the 1480th Steve added to the Project Steve list!
Congrats Dr. Steve! Here we are celebrating his successful (virtual) PhD defense!
New papers and talks
This month, Jay and a large group of researchers (led by public health professor Kai Ruggeri) put together a paper evaluating expectations from social and behavioral science about COVID-19 by rigorously examining 742 scientific articles on human behavior during the COVID pandemic. They studied 19 statements like “Cultures accustomed to prioritizing freedom over security may also have more difficulty coordinating in the face of a pandemic” from their paper published at the onset of the pandemic and found evidence in support of 89% of their key claims (where evidence was available).
Read here to learn more about this study and potential lessons for the next pandemic:
After getting his PhD, Steve just released his first working paper from his time as a post-doc, with Claire Robertson, William J. Brady, and Jay. They recruited a nationally representative sample in the US and found that most people think that divisive content, misinformation, negative content, high arousal content, and moral outrage all go "viral" on social media—but they don't think this type of content should go viral! There was bipartisan consensus that social media should instead amplify accurate, positive, nuanced content.
Read the paper here to learn more about this discrepancy in people’s perceptions of what does vs. should go viral on social media:
In terms of public outreach, Steve talked about his research on how intergroup animosity drives virality on social media on More of a Comment than a Question Podcast this month. You can listen to this episode here:
Meanwhile, Jay joined the Lead-Lag Live Podcast recently to talk about his understanding of psychology and economic decision-making. This episode is now available on Spotify. You can check it out here:
On Oct 19th, Jay and his co-author Dominic Packer did their first joint in-person book talk on The Power of Us at Johns Hopkins (hosted by Alison Taylor, the Executive Director of Ethical Systems). You can read a summary of the discussion in the campus newspaper. Be sure to look out for more book events in the future!
Trick or Treat!
Finally, it’s time to get spooky! Jay hosted a Halloween Party for the NYU Social Psychology Program and the highlight were these delicious chocolate skulls (which also included an important lesson from neuroscience).
Here are some pictures from the social psychology Halloween Party (organized by Ali and Kal):
Tessa West made an appearance along with 3 of the Jerks at Work from her recent book (from left, the dreaded Micromanager, Credit Stealer, and Gaslighter).
With some tips from Jay on costumes to scare your fellow scientists, we conclude this month’s newsletter and see you next month!
In case you missed last month’s newsletter…
As always, if you have any photos, news, or research you’d like to have included in this newsletter, please reach out to the Lab Manager (nyu.vanbavel.lab@gmail.com) who writes our monthly newsletter. We encourage former lab members and collaborators to share exciting career updates or job opportunities—we’d love to hear what you’re up to and help sustain a flourishing lab community. Please also drop comments below about anything you like about the newsletter or would like us to add.