On social media, posting positive content should generate positive emotions via emotional contagion. Yet, emerging discussions regarding toxic positivity (TP) suggest that positivity can backfire, showing the limits of emotional contagion. Through the perspective of neoliberal self-help ideology, this research investigated how people understand and perceive TP. Study 1 found, via focus groups, that social media posts containing TP involve two message characteristics—overgeneralization and commanding words—and two psychological processes—ignoring negativity and perceived poster privilege. Additionally, post ephemerality mitigates the negative effects of TP. Study 2 experimentally tested these findings. It found that the effect of post positivity (low positivity / high positivity / toxic positivity message characteristics) on post liking was mediated by ignoring negativity and perceived privilege. However, ephemerality did not moderate the aforementioned mediation relationships. Therefore, the concepts associated with TP—overgeneralization, commanding words, ignoring negativity, and perceived privilege—can be understood as boundary conditions for online emotional contagion.
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