Arousal Increases Social Transmission of Information
Jonah Berger tested whether physiological arousal on its own makes people more likely to pass information on. Undergraduates were made more aroused by jogging on the spot, or kept calm by sitting still, and then offered an unrelated news article they could email to others. The aroused participants were more willing to share it. With forty participants it was a small study, and it became widely cited as evidence that arousal causes sharing and as an explanation of why content evoking high-arousal emotions spreads. Two larger replications published in 2024, using the same manipulation with sharing on social media as the outcome, found no effect, so the result should be read as an early finding that did not hold rather than as an established one.
Jonah Berger tested whether physiological arousal on its own makes people more likely to pass information on. Undergraduates were made more aroused by jogging on the spot, or kept calm by sitting still, and then offered an unrelated news article they could email to others. The aroused participants were more willing to share it. With forty participants it was a small study, and it became widely cited as evidence that arousal causes sharing and as an explanation of why content evoking high-arousal emotions spreads. Two larger replications published in 2024, using the same manipulation with sharing on social media as the outcome, found no effect, so the result should be read as an early finding that did not hold rather than as an established one.
Written from the citation as recorded when this source was checked, and the description of the original in the 2024 replication report.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Berger, J. (2011). 'Arousal increases social transmission of information.' Psychological Science, 22(7), 891-893. doi:10.1177/0956797611413294. Forty participants; those made physiologically aroused by jogging on the spot, for sixty seconds as Contagious reports it, were more willing to email a news article. DOI confirmed at the Association for Psychological Science journal page, 2026-10-06; sample size as reported in the 2024 replication.
Where we use it
- Why Sad Posts Go Viral Less Often, Why We Engage
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611413294
DOI: 10.1177/0956797611413294