| Abstract | 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.
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