Scrolling through your social media feed today often feels like navigating a minefield of digital tears, furious rants, and deeply impassioned pleas. But if those intense political posts are designed to win arguments and persuade voters, they are failing miserably.
According to a new study from Cornell University, the modern internet user sees straight through online outrage. Viewers are highly sceptical of emotional comments they encounter on their screens, consistently judging them as inauthentic, inappropriate, and manipulative.
Published as a new monograph titled Emotions on Our Screens, the research reveals that viewers question the sincerity of fear or sadness expressed online, even when they completely agree with the speaker’s underlying political stance.
Exhaustion of constant emotion
To understand how we process digital outrage and sadness, researchers conducted six extensive experiments involving nearly 6,400 participants. Viewers were shown simulated news reports, text messages, and TikTok posts featuring people expressing deep emotion over climate change.
Dr Talbot Andrews, an assistant professor of government at Cornell who co-authored the research alongside Lauren P. Olson and Yanna Krupnikov, explained that the sheer volume of online emotion has fundamentally changed how we process other people’s feelings.
“Changes in the media environment have given us unprecedented access to the expressed emotions of others. Through the internet and social media, we’re far more connected to strangers, and those strangers are often very emotional about politics. Years ago, we might have occasionally seen someone being emotional in a newspaper article or TV news story, or had friends or family text something emotional about politics. Now it feels almost constant.” Dr Andrews said.
The researchers found that participants consistently rated emotional comments as significantly less authentic than stoic, neutral ones.
Dr Andrews added: “Making people emotional is a great way to motivate them to care about an issue. But expressing your own emotions is not necessarily going to change others’ minds about that issue.”
Sad faces and crocodile tears
Surprisingly, this scepticism persisted regardless of the platform. Whether the emotion was filtered through a professional journalist or posted directly by a user, the audience remained incredibly wary.
“We thought people might see emotions as more authentic in news articles, where journalists act as gatekeepers, compared to social media, where people have editorial control before sharing anything. Surprisingly, we didn’t find many differences. Scepticism was stronger when viewers saw a sad face, rather than just text, in simulated TikTok screenshots. People thought that seemed especially inappropriate.” Dr Andrews explained.
Political alignment offered no protection against this backlash. People judged emotional posts harshly even when they agreed with the poster’s views.
Dr Andrews said: “People are sceptical when they disagree with social media posts at all, but the effect of emotional expression is pretty similar either way. We saw the same pattern in an experiment featuring posts from a climate sceptic. People tended to see the emotion as manipulative. Like, ‘I think you’re crying crocodile tears to make me feel bad about this, and I see through that ploy.’”
A search for authenticity
Despite the widespread suspicion towards online tears, the researchers noted a distinct silver lining. While observers fiercely judged the person posting the emotional content, it did not cause a backlash against the actual issue.
“It seems localised to the person who’s being emotional. It’s more that people will be sceptical of your sincerity in posting, but no one was less worried about climate change because they saw someone get emotional about it. Study participants didn’t punish emotional content, just viewed it as less appropriate and authentic than more stoic expressions.” Dr Andrews noted.
Ultimately, the researchers argue that people should not completely suppress their feelings online, provided they adjust their expectations regarding its impact.
Dr Andrews said: “Emotional expression can serve an important role, helping people find a community that cares about their issue. Even if it doesn’t achieve any influential goal – persuading others or building your social media clout – expressing emotions often makes people feel better. The takeaway is not that people should keep their feelings to themselves, but that such expression won’t always be taken at face value.”
