A story can make us feel something and still remain private. Another can be shared because it is useful, surprising or relevant to a friend. So does emotional arousal itself drive sharing?
The evidence suggests a connection, but it does not support a universal formula. An influential news study found that certain emotions were associated with sharing; later experiments challenged one proposed mechanism.
What the news study found
In 2012, Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman studied New York Times articles published over three months and whether they appeared on the paper’s most-emailed list. Articles associated with high-arousal emotions such as awe, anger and anxiety were more likely to be highly shared than those associated with lower-arousal sadness. Practical usefulness, interest and surprise were also positively associated with sharing.
The study included experiments as well as the observational news analysis. The news data describe one publisher and a particular email-sharing environment. They do not tell us what effect a particular emotion will have on a modern social feed or prove why an individual shared a story.
A separate test produced a different result
Another study by Berger in 2011 manipulated physiological arousal and measured willingness to share an unrelated news article by email. In 2024, Prowten and colleagues repeated the arousal manipulation in two studies with 111 and 160 undergraduate participants, updating the outcome to sharing on social media. Neither replication found an effect of incidental arousal on willingness to share.
That result casts doubt on the idea that arousal alone is sufficient in that experimental setting. It does not erase the New York Times association: different participants, materials and sharing measures answer different questions. Nor does it show that emotion never matters.
Emotion is not the whole decision
Arousal describes activation, not whether a feeling is pleasant. Awe and anger can both be activating, but they are different experiences. The reason someone shares may also depend on the message, the intended recipient, the platform and the social context. The evidence above does not establish which factor caused any particular share.
A useful distinction is between an article that evokes a feeling and a person whose arousal was raised independently of the article. A failed test of the latter is not a direct test of every emotionally engaging story.
What to do with the uncertainty
Start with a clear, accurate point worth passing to someone else.
Let a real finding carry its emotional weight. Do not add alarm that the evidence cannot support.
Compare versions carefully and record what changed. A change in shares alone does not reveal readers’ motives.
Check useful outcomes beyond shares, such as whether readers visit and engage with the original material.
Emotion can be part of a reason to share. The defensible lesson is narrower than “make people feel intensely and they will share”: useful information, context and a credible claim still matter, and the causal role of arousal remains unsettled.
Sources
Berger and Milkman (2012), What Makes Online Content Viral? — New York Times analysis and experiments.
Prowten et al. (2024), Does Physiological Arousal Increase Social Transmission of Information? — two replications of Berger (2011).
AI-generated editorial illustrations do not depict study participants.
