How social media influencers’ emotional expressions shape their popularity: the role of authenticity and appropriateness

Abstract

The success of (social media) influencers hinges on their popularity. We investigated how critical perceptual (warmth, competence) and behavioural (engagement, electronic word of mouth) indicators of influencers’ potential to gain popularity are shaped by emotional expressions in their posts. An initial correlational study tapping participants’ actual experiences with real-world influencers revealed that influencers’ emotional styles are effectively characterised by positivity and negativity. Three follow-up experiments varied influencers’ emotional styles. We found that popularity indicators were shaped by the perceived authenticity and appropriateness of influencers’ emotional expressions, rather than by valence per se. Whereas positive emotional expressions were generally more appropriate than negative expressions, favourable consequences were sometimes counteracted by opposing effects on perceived authenticity, which were more varied and context-dependent. We conclude that influencers successfully navigating multiple demands (appropriateness, authenticity) on their emotional behaviour gain popularity, thereby extending research on the interpersonal effects of emotions to the social media context.