The Internet already knows that spewing hate into conversations will make them last longer—mostly with more hate. However, we never really knew it scientifically.

Not to worry though, SCIENCE! has stepped into let us know that, yes, we were right.

Slovenian and British researchers recently released the results of a study they did on the role that emotions play in online discussions. They used a process called "sentiment analysis" to identify emotional content on BBC's discussion forums and Digg.com. The researchers used algorithms to look for features such as keywords, emoticons, and linguistic markers like misspellings. They then used the results to calculate a "happiness score" for each post.

They found that longer threads tend to be overwhelmingly negative as compared to shorter posts. The happiness score decreases the longer the threads goes. Interestingly, these long threads usually began with a negative post.

"If you want a long chat, don't start by saying 'I love this!', at least not online," says Mike Thelwall, head of the Statistical Cybermetrics research group in Wolverhampton, UK.

Here's one of the more interesting parts of the study. Negative posts created self-organized behavior among the users. The negative emotions increased the number of posts and social groups were spontaneously created.

A single post can quickly generate a community of feeling if it is provocative enough.

In fact, this is all typically human behaviour. "There is evidence that group cohesiveness may be related to negative feelings about others," agrees Tom Buchanan, a psychologist at the University of Westminster in London. "Members of an online community might unite around a perceived attack on them or some aspect of their identity."

Would you like to have your posts be more positive and shorter? According to the researchers, talking about aging rockstars produced "the least vigorous discussions."

Mick Jagger vs. Robert Plant: Discuss amongst yourselves.

Via.