“So each time you read an article, your brain calculates the value of sharing or not sharing it, which then determines its virality—and it all happens pretty much unconsciously,” according to an article in Popular Science.

The research

The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to monitor study participants as they looked over 80 headlines and news story summaries from the New York Times, all relating to the same basic topic. fMRI tracks brain activity based on blood flow. The researchers monitored brain regions of interest (ROIs) related to self-related and social cognition.

They completed two studies on the subject and shared their results in the paper “A neural model of valuation and information virality,” published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Emily Falk, Ph.D., senior author and the director of University of Pennsylvania’s Communication Neuroscience Lab, explains how activity in specific regions of the brain indicates how valuable it would be to share information, and that value translates to its likelihood of going viral.

The paper states, “We focused on neural activity in theory-driven ROIs associated with key psychological processes (positive valuation, self-related, and social processing) measured while participants in two samples were exposed to headlines and abstracts of NYTimes health news articles. fMRI participants also provided ratings of the likelihood with which they would share each article with their Facebook friends.”

Whole-brain analyses of regions associated with each article’s rank of population-level sharing counts in study 1 and study 2. Image credit: PNAS.

Brain mapping

Neural activity was observed as the participants read the article titles and abstracts. MRI scanners from Siemens were used to collect neuroimaging data. The researchers then used Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM), a widely-used package for fMRI image analysis. SPM refers to the construction and assessment of spatially extended statistical processes used to test hypotheses about functional imaging data.

The data showed information eliciting greater brain response in self-, social-, and in turn, value-related systems is more likely to be shared. The researchers concluded, “Taken together, our data support a parsimonious neurocognitive model of virality, one of the most prominent social phenomena in the 21st century, and shed light on the core functions of sharing—to express aspects of ourselves and to strengthen our social bonds.”

What topics go viral?

“While a lot of different, very specific recommendations on how to make things viral are floating around in the world—for instance, make content emotional—our work shows that there are really two underlying motives to share, which are deeply rooted in core human nature: We share to connect to others and to present ourselves in a positive light,” states study author Christin Scholz, a Ph.D. student at the University of Pennsylvania.

“People are interested in reading or sharing content that connects to their own experiences, or to their sense of who they are or who they want to be,” explains Falk. “They share things that might improve their relationships, make them look smart or empathic or cast them in a positive light.”

So, which topics are most likely to go viral? Of the 50+ “Behind the Headlines” blog posts to date, the article with the most shares just so happens to also relate to the field neuroscience.

Leave a comment to tell me what topics you’d like to see covered (and hopefully will share!)