RE: Emotional Selection in Memes: The Case of Urban Legends

From: Richard Brodie (richard@brodietech.com)
Date: Thu 06 Nov 2003 - 16:35:22 GMT

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    Wow! Real memetics research!

    > -----Original Message-----
    > From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk
    > [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk] On Behalf Of William Benzon
    > Sent: Thursday, November 6, 2003 5:53 AM
    > To: memetics
    > Subject: Emotional Selection in Memes: The Case of Urban Legends
    >
    >  
    > http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/press_releases/december_2001/p
    > sp8161028.html
    >
    > Emotional Selection in Memes: The Case of Urban Legends  
    >
    > Chip Heath
    > Graduate School of Business
    > Stanford University  
    >
    > Chris Bell and Emily Sternberg
    > Fuqua School of Business
    > Duke University  
    >
    >     ABSTRACT
    >     This article explores how much memes like urban legends
    > succeed on the basis of informational selection (i.e., truth
    > or a moral lesson) and emotional selection (i.e., the ability
    > to evoke emotions like anger, fear, or disgust). The article
    > focuses on disgust because its elicitors have been precisely
    > described. In Study 1, with controls for informational
    > factors like truth, people were more willing to pass along
    > stories that elicited stronger disgust. Study 2 randomly
    > sampled legends and created versions that varied in disgust;
    > people preferred to pass along versions that produced the
    > highest level of disgust. Study 3 coded legends for specific
    > story motifs that produce disgust (e.g., ingestion of a
    > contaminated substance) and found that legends that contained
    > more disgust motifs were distributed more widely on urban
    > legend Web sites. The conclusion discusses implications of
    > emotional selection for the social marketplace of ideas.
    >
    >
    > ===============================================================
    > This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
    > Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
    > For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
    > see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
    >
    >

    =============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit

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