Is "good vibes only" really good? Investigating perceptions of toxic positivity on social media

• Main Authors: Wan, Aretha Li Hong, Wong, Stacy Siqi
• Other Authors: Lew Zijian
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2024
• Subjects: Social Sciences; Toxic positivity; Social media; Emotional contagion
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/174380
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Social media plays increasingly large roles in people’s lives, forming norms regarding posting positive content and resulting in a positivity bias on many platforms. Emotional contagion posits that posting positive content should generate positive emotions, which in turn should inspire people to post more positive content, resulting in a self-reinforcing cycle of positive emotions. Yet, recent emerging discussions regarding toxic positivity (TP) in popular psychology literature suggests that positivity can backfire under certain conditions–implying that online emotional contagion has its limits. This research aims to investigate the phenomenon of TP and explore how its associated psychological processes can act as boundary conditions for emotional contagion. Study 1 consists of focus group discussions to obtain opinions regarding TP. Study 2 makes use of study 1’s findings to present various posts to participants and evaluate perceptions of TP in an experiment. Our findings show good support for the constructs of ‘Ignoring Negativity’ and ‘Position of Privilege’ as mediators between the three conditions (Low Positivity, High Positivity, Toxic Positivity) and Liking of the posts–suggesting that perceptions of these constructs hinder emotional contagion, generating negative emotions instead. Manifested through the phenomenon of TP, these constructs are therefore plausible boundary conditions for online emotional contagion.