Social Info Goes Viral

Social science research shows urban legends are more likely to be shared when they contain social information (details about people or relationships).

“First, people were attracted to stories that contained survival threats and social relationships. They were also likely to pass them both on to another person. Second, and this is more important, urban legends which contained social information, such as that in the cybersex legend, or combined survival information with social information, such as that in the baby-crying legend, were more successfully remembered than those that only involved survival information, such as that in the spider-in-the-hair legend.”

#socialscience

http://theconversation.com/this-is-why-some-urban-legends-go-viral-28527?utm_content=bufferc889d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=plus.google.com&utm_campaign=buffer//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js