Social Networks allow users to self-present by sharing personal contents with
others which may add comments. Recent studies highlighted how the emotions
expressed in a post affect others' posts, eliciting a congruent emotion. So
far, no studies have yet investigated the emotional coherence between wall
posts and its comments. This research evaluated posts and comments mood of
Facebook profiles, analyzing their linguistic features, and a measure to assess
an excessive self-presentation was introduced. Two new experimental measures
were built, describing the emotional loading (positive and negative) of posts
and comments, and the mood correspondence between them was evaluated. The
profiles "empathy", the mood coherence between post and comments, was used to
investigate the relation between an excessive self-presentation and the
emotional coherence of a profile. Participants publish a higher average number
of posts with positive mood. To publish an emotional post corresponds to get
more likes, comments and receive a coherent mood of comments, confirming the
emotional contagion effect reported in literature. Finally, the more empathetic
profiles are characterized by an excessive self-presentation, having more
posts, and receiving more comments and likes. To publish emotional contents
appears to be functional to receive more comments and likes, fulfilling needs
of attention-seeking.Comment: Submitted to Complexit
