Why Awe Makes People Share: Evidence From 6,956 Articles
A study of 6,956 New York Times articles linked practical value and awe to more sharing. Learn what this finding means for educational content.
Some information feels useful enough to save. Other information produces a faster reaction: someone else needs to see this.
That distinction appears in a study of 6,956 articles from The New York Times. Practical value helped articles travel. So did interest. But one of the strongest signals was not informational at all. It was awe.
What 6,956 articles revealed about why people share
Jonah Berger and Katherine L. Milkman studied every article that appeared on The New York Times homepage over roughly three months. They tracked whether each one reached the newspaper’s Most E-Mailed list, a public ranking of the stories readers forwarded most often.
The researchers did not simply compare science with politics or health with sports. Their statistical models accounted for factors such as where an article appeared on the homepage, how long it remained prominent, its publication timing, the author’s fame, its length, and its topic.
In the simplified interpretation later presented in Berger’s book Contagious, articles with greater practical value were about 30% more likely to reach the Most E-Mailed list. Articles that evoked awe were also about 30% more likely. Articles that inspired sadness were about 16% less likely.
That last result is the surprise.
Useful information has an obvious route to another person. We forward a guide, explanation, or warning because it might help. Awe seems less practical, yet it can create an equally strong social impulse.
Useful content says, “This could help someone.”
Awe says, “You need to see this.”
Why useful information travels
Practical value gives sharing a purpose. Sending an article about managing money, understanding a medical issue, or learning a difficult skill can be a small act of assistance.
The information helps the recipient, but it also says something about the sender: I noticed something relevant to you. Sharing becomes a way to maintain a relationship through useful knowledge.
This is why practical learning content often performs well. A study method, a clear explanation, or a compact framework gives the reader an immediate reason to save or forward it.
But usefulness alone does not explain why people send images of distant galaxies, remarkable scientific discoveries, or extraordinary human achievements. For that, we need emotion.
Why awe makes people share
Psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt describe awe as a response to something vast that challenges a person’s existing mental frame. The trigger may be physical scale, great knowledge, beauty, power, or an idea that forces us to reconsider what we thought was possible.
Awe is not merely pleasant. It is activating.
Berger and Milkman’s broader finding was that high-arousal emotions were linked to transmission. Positive emotions such as awe could encourage sharing, but high-arousal negative emotions such as anger and anxiety could do so as well. Sadness, a lower-arousal state in their analysis, was associated with less sharing.
The useful distinction is therefore not simply positive versus negative. It is active versus passive.
An emotion that wakes the body and focuses attention creates readiness for action. Sharing is one action that can follow.
Useful content gives people a reason to share. Awe gives them the energy.
The observational newspaper data cannot prove that awe caused every individual email. However, the researchers also ran controlled experiments supporting the broader role of emotional arousal in transmission.
Why science stories often create awe
Science has a natural advantage when it reveals scale, hidden mechanisms, or unexpected connections.
A Webb telescope image is not only visually beautiful. It shows star formation inside structures thousands of light-years away. A medical image can transform an ordinary cough into visible fluid dynamics. A new discovery can make something familiar suddenly feel mysterious.
The strongest science communication does more than explain a fact. It changes the size of the reader’s mental world.
This is why a technically correct explanation can still feel inert, while another version becomes unforgettable. The difference is often not additional information. It is whether the information creates perspective.
For learners, that does not mean turning every lesson into spectacle. It means looking for the consequence, scale, contrast, or hidden mechanism that makes the fact matter.
Combining practical value and awe in learning content
The research does not show that emotion beats utility. It points toward two distinct routes to sharing that can work together.
A useful learning post might give someone:
- a method they can try today;
- a compact explanation of a difficult idea;
- a question that improves recall;
- a workflow for turning notes into flashcards;
- a comparison that makes a confusing concept clearer.
An awe-producing post might reveal:
- a scale that is difficult to imagine;
- a hidden process behind an everyday event;
- an unexpected connection between two subjects;
- a scientific image that changes how the concept feels;
- a discovery that expands what the learner thought was possible.
The most shareable educational content can combine both:
- Start with a true, perspective-changing idea.
- Explain it clearly enough that the reader can repeat it.
- Give the reader a useful implication or next step.
- End with a line worth sending to another person.
In a flashcard or Second Brain workflow, this can mean preserving more than the isolated answer. Add the surprising implication, the visual, or the “why this matters” explanation that made the idea memorable enough to capture.
Do not manufacture wonder. Find the wonder already inside the subject.
What the study does not prove
The percentages need careful interpretation.
They are modeled associations linked to increases in how interesting, useful, or awe-inspiring an article was rated. They do not mean that adding an inspiring photograph guarantees exactly 30% more shares.
The outcome was also specific: reaching The New York Times Most E-Mailed list during the study period. Email forwarding in 2008 is not identical to reposting a TikTok carousel, sharing an Instagram post, or sending a YouTube video.
Modern platforms add recommendation algorithms, watch time, interface design, and different social norms. The original effect sizes should not be copied directly into forecasts for those platforms.
What can transfer is the mental model:
- Practical value gives people a reason to help.
- High-arousal emotion gives people a reason to act now.
- A compelling story makes the information easier to carry.
- The content still needs to deliver what its emotional hook promises.
Attention without a useful idea is disposable. Utility without emotional energy is easy to postpone.
A simple pre-publication question
Before publishing educational content, ask:
Will someone share this because it helps, because it moves them, or because it does both?
If the answer is neither, the post may be accurate but socially inert.
The goal is not to make every lesson louder. It is to make the value vivid. Give people something useful enough to keep and meaningful enough to pass on.
Sources and further reading
- What Makes Online Content Viral?, Jonah Berger and Katherine L. Milkman
- Contagious book excerpt, Jonah Berger
- The Secret to Online Success: What Makes Content Go Viral, Liz Rees-Jones, Katherine L. Milkman, and Jonah Berger
- Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion, Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt