What vegetarians and vegans have going for them

From Jonah Lehrer:

Basically, viral videos tap into emotions, not facts.

It’s one of the most popular online videos ever produced, having been viewed 355 million times on YouTube. At first glance, it’s hard to understand why the clip is so famous, since nothing much happens. Two little boys, Charlie and Harry, are sitting in a chair when Charlie, the younger brother, mischievously bites Harry’s finger. There’s a shriek and then a laugh. The clip is called “Charlie Bit My Finger—Again!”

Why has this footage gone viral? The answer, according to a new study by Jonah Berger, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has to do with the visceral emotions it arouses in viewers.
Here’s the thing about Harry and Charlie—they are incredibly expressive kids. In the span of 56 seconds, we see their faces go from anticipation to agony to laughter. Just when we’re worried that Harry might actually be hurt, he breaks out in a wide smile. The relief is palpable, the delight infectious. (Harry’s adorable British accent doesn’t hurt, either.)

Mr. Berger argues that the popularity of such videos is rooted in the way they excite the body, inducing a spectrum of physiological changes. When we watch Harry and Charlie, we briefly enter into a state of “high arousal,” as the autonomic nervous system mirrors the flurry of feelings on-screen. Our heart rate increases and sweat glands open; the body prepares for action. These are the same physical changes that occur when we encounter any strongly emotional content, from a scary movie to a sappy love poem.

In his study, Mr. Berger demonstrates that such states of arousal make people far more likely to share information. For instance, when he had subjects jog in place for 60 seconds—Mr. Berger wanted to trigger the symptoms of arousal directly—the number of people who emailed a news article to their friends more than doubled. He also boosted levels of “social transmission” by showing his subjects frightening and funny videos first. “Levels of arousal spill over,” Mr. Berger says. “When people are aroused, they are much more likely to pass on information.”

This builds on previous work by Mr. Berger in which he analyzed 7,500 articles that appeared on the most-emailed list of the New York Times between August 2008 and February 2009. While Mr. Berger initially assumed that people would share articles with practical implications—he imagined lots of pieces on diets and gadgets—he discovered instead that the most popular stories were those that triggered the most arousing emotions, such as awe and anger. We don’t want to share facts—we want to share feelings.

This is what vegetarians and vegans have going for them. Emotions are very handy when you want to convert people to the cause.

The Paleo people think they have the facts on their side. But the most effective Paleo marketers tend to play on people's emotions, not on facts and information. Sometimes this comes at the expense of accuracy ("humans haven't evolved much in 10,000 years, and that's why the Paleo diet is best") or rigorous thinking.

I'd love to have both: facts and emotions. But it's important to know when to use one and then the other.

What I despise about the vegetarians and vegans is that they have the emotions down pat ("I don't feel good about killing an animal just so I can enjoy bacon") but they don't have the info ("Red meat causes cancer and it's so much more efficient to feed grains to animals than it is to humans").