Fault Lines and Tiktok: Shifting Perspectives, One Video at a Time

Easy accessibility to social media content equates to increased access to emotional-charged materials. Research investigating the consequences of such emotional exposures on day-to-day lives is growing, with previous works showing high correlations between social media use and emotional modulations of the user. (Christensen, 2018; Mugg, 2005). Tiktok is a popular media platform and is a common tactic to present users with highly emotional content to maintain engagement. (Kin, 2017). A question arises as to the emotional induction rates and effects of such streaming content, as previous work demonstrates that emotion induction is highly associated with physiological arousal (Siedlecka, 2018) and affects cognitive performance (Forgas, 1998). The current study aims to address the current void in literature on Tiktok, investigating consequences of positive or negative viewing experiences on the platform, and how it may influence social perceptions. 34 participants were randomly assigned to the positive or negative induction cohort, and watched a series of videos on the platform. After the induction session, participants read 15 vague scenario passages and were asked to apply fault of no-fault judgement to the protagonists. A higher score indicated a higher rate of fault attribution. Physiological arousal measures of heart rate and skin conductance were collected throughout the video viewing and fault attribution sessions. It is hypothesized that positive Tiktok clip viewing will show fewer fault attribution (lower score), compared to negative viewing, with decreased heart rate and skin conductance levels at judgement moments. Data is currently being analyze. Understanding how external stimuli, like emotionally-charged Tiktok clips, can influence interactions such as fault attribution, is important to understand our continuously changing media landscape and potential consequences in social settings