Do people prefer to spread good news or bad news? Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have intensively studied the New York Times list of most-e-mailed articles and found that readers would rather enlighten others.
People preferred e-mailing articles with positive rather than negative themes, and they liked to send long articles on intellectually challenging topics. Perhaps most of all, readers wanted to share articles that inspired awe, an emotion that the researchers investigated after noticing how many science articles made the list.
(Read reading the results in New York Times)