Does Social Endorsement Influence Physiological Arousal?

Endorsement cues on social media (e.g., "Trending", "Like"s or "Retweet"s) lead to greater interest in the content [6]. This preliminary study explores how the perceived social endorsement of both stimulating and non-stimulating content influences physiological arousal (skin conductance level). Stimulating pictures triggered more physiological arousal than non-stimulating pictures, but only when the picture was framed as a "trending" picture. When the picture was labeled as a "non-trending" picture, non-stimulating pictures induced higher levels of physiological arousal than stimulating pictures. The present study lends insight into how people respond to endorsement cues on social media from an affective level. More importantly, it shows that endorsement on social media is not the panacea for receiving attention; the inherent nature of the content plays a critical role in how social cues are perceived.