Op-Ed: Life imitates science? It does on social media when the science is about stress, heat, and moods

Anything connected to the internet — from smartphones to power plant controllers — can be manipulated. — Photo: — © PhotoTelegram

It’s far too easy to get cynical about social media as any sort of indicator of anything. Between the bots and the brief attention spans, what’s real? What’s actually worth noticing. You’d be surprised.

Researchers at MIT, Duke, Harvard, and elsewhere have discovered something through a truly vast and unique social media survey. The scale and scope of this survey are critically relevant. The message of the study is clear enough.

Heat triggers negativity.

The study is based on a 2019 survey of Twitter and Weibo data published on OneEarth on 21 August this year.

This MIT study is also at least a bit of a first in terms of social media as a sociological tool on this scale. It took a long time to happen, but here it is.

“Market sentiment” in terms of human stress hasn’t been measured in this way before, to my knowledge.

This method of study is pretty much bot-proof, too, because the nature of the study is hard to manipulate with fake stats. You can’t generate a false statistical positive if you can’t quantify a real positive.

The added negativity depends on heat levels, but the results from 157 countries were consistent in terms of outcomes.

The trigger temperature for negativity is 35C, or roughly human core temperature. That ties the negative sentiments directly to measurable physiological responses, too.  “Double entry demographics”, perhaps?

Now some irony. After all this time and talk, public policy is finally getting around to managing heat stress. Not the other types of stress, apparently, but it’s a start.

So people get negative if you heat them up, so what?

So negativity affects behavior and decisions, that’s what.

8 billion people who were already highly stressed being negative isn’t likely to deliver a good outcome, is it?

And it hasn’t.  

This study exists in a wider ecosystem of massive historical stress. Given the constant extremely high levels of social stress in human reality, such mass negativity is a glaring but defining factor in global issues.

Wars, famines, droughts, poverty, toxic environments, social implosions, insane politics, ongoing economic catastrophes and personal insecurities, you name it; all those wrong decisions and the wrong perspectives are making it worse. And if the temperature goes up a degree or so, the people making the lousy decisions get worse.

It’s an enchanting picture, isn’t it?

This survey goes so well with the pole-to-pole global mismanagement and sheer social and economic chaos we’ve all come to despise so sincerely.

Can you somehow dimly imagine nearly 30 years of absolutely nothing being done properly or well by the dumbest people in history?

Damn straight you can, and more to the point, you know you can.

“Negativity” comes in many forms. It comes in hostility, intolerance, and irrationality.

This heat is caused by failure to manage the unnecessary stress that’s caused by the heat. Anyone need a map of that sentence?  

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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.