How public emotions change with emergent social events *

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the correlation between emergent social events and different types of public emotion. We first extract the indexes of events and emotions from data of Baidu Index. Then the correlation between emergent social events and public emotions and the correlation between different types of public emotions are analyzed by the Granger causality test. Results show that the public's attention to emergent social events involved in this study has gone through a process from explosion, the decline to fading. Moreover, the trajectory of fear in part of the period is consistent with the life cycle model. We also find that fear and anger are the main emotional reactions at the beginning of most emergent social events, and after the attention to the event subsides, sadness and depression increase, and depression has peaked to varying degrees at different stages of the event. Finally, Granger analyses show that most of the event indexes can predict fear in short-term, while they can predict sadness and depression in the middle and long term. Also, fear and anger can more or less predict subsequent sadness and depression. The results could verify the individual response to stress at the group level.