Moody news: The impact of collective emotion ratings on online news consumers’ attitudes, memory, and behavioral intentions

Indicators of collective user behavior and opinion are increasingly common features of online news stories and may include information about how the story made users feel. An experiment (N = 298) examined the effects of the presence and valence of a “mood meter” posted alongside an online human-interest story on memory for, attitude toward, emotional response to, and intentions to share the story. The presence of a mood meter led to lower recall of story content, more negative attitudes toward the story, and less positive emotional responses. The results suggest that participating in a mood meter may attenuate positive responses to human-interest stories.