I had heard of the PAD system before when I was doing research about how we react to certain colors and to see it used in this context, of how we react to pictures, was rather interesting. The article states that virality often comes from emotions high in arousal and dominance, that emotions like happiness, surprise and admiration are often emotions associated with viral photos. Thinking back to the viral content that I’ve seen in the past few weeks and months, for the most part they’ve been things to incite happiness, surprise, and admiration, but also lots of negative emotions associated with many of the viral content, mainly anger and disgust. I think as long as content can get people really riled up, whether positively or negatively, the content will go viral. It doesn’t necessarily have to be positive emotions. All press is good press.
- Lilian