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The rapid rise of social media has enabled real-time interaction among users, accelerating and complicating the ways emotions influence human behavior. Yet the specific mechanisms through which emotions are transmitted and tied to viewer responses, particularly in settings where video and viewer comments are synchronized, remain poorly understood.

Grounded in the Emotions as Social Information (EASI) theory, which argues that emotional expressions function as vital social signals, a research team from the University of Tsukuba examined more than 50,000 barrage comments. These comments, which appear on screen in real time as videos play, were collected from a single promotional video created in collaboration with a specific company and posted on the Chinese video platform Bilibili.

By applying emotion analysis and statistical modeling, the researchers investigated how viewers' expressed emotions relate to purchasing decisions and imitative behavior, whether repeating their own actions or mimicking others, across personal and interpersonal dimensions.

The , published in Scientific Reports, revealed a clear link between positive emotional comments and purchasing intent for the featured product. The study also observed synchronized imitation of others' comments in specific video scenes, suggesting the presence of real-time emotional contagion.

At the same time, the researchers uncovered subtler dynamics: For example, repeated viewing of the same video showed only a weak connection with expressed emotions, indicating that different types of behavior shape the relationship between emotion and purchasing intention in distinct ways.