Uploaded February 2017 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
J. Berger has done research on what makes things go viral – what makes people share things. In a fascinating study he divided his subjects into two groups. He had the first group sit in front of a laptop with an article on the screen and he told them to read the article and share it if they found it interesting. With the second group he did things differently; he had them jogging on a treadmill for 10 minutes and only then did they sit in front of the laptop with the article on the screen. Once again, they were told to share it if they thought it was interesting. The results: 75% chose to do so in the second condition – more than twice as many as in the first. The reason is something called ‘excitation transfer’; people in the second group attributed their state to the content of the article rather than to the physical activity they had engaged in.
The Moral: Heightened alertness makes things appear more interesting than they actually are.
How can we use this? Any activity that gets the students’ pulse racing is likely to produce a rise in motivation; debates, competitions, timed activities or tasks involving intense physical movement (e.g. running dictation) are some of the many possibilities.
J. Berger has done research on what makes things go viral – what makes people share things. In a fascinating study he divided his subjects into two groups. He had the first group sit in front of a laptop with an article on the screen and he told them to read the article and share it if they found it interesting. With the second group he did things differently; he had them jogging on a treadmill for 10 minutes and only then did they sit in front of the laptop with the article on the screen. Once again, they were told to share it if they thought it was interesting. The results: 75% chose to do so in the second condition – more than twice as many as in the first. The reason is something called ‘excitation transfer’; people in the second group attributed their state to the content of the article rather than to the physical activity they had engaged in.
The Moral: Heightened alertness makes things appear more interesting than they actually are.
How can we use this? Any activity that gets the students’ pulse racing is likely to produce a rise in motivation; debates, competitions, timed activities or tasks involving intense physical movement (e.g. running dictation) are some of the many possibilities.
