Abstract
Online sharing impacts which information is widely available and influential in society. Yet, systematically influencing sharing behavior remains difficult. Past research highlights two factors associated with sharing: the social and self-relevance of the to-be-shared content. Based on this prior neuroimaging work and theory, we developed a manipulation in the form of short prompts that are attached to media content (here health news articles). These prompts encourage readers to think about how sharing the content may help them to fulfill motivations to present themselves positively (self-relevance) or connect positively to others (social relevance). Fifty-three young adults completed this pre-registered experiment while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Ninety-six health news articles were randomly assigned to three within-subject conditions that encouraged self-related or social thinking or a control. Invoking self-related or social thoughts about health-related news (Information sharing within online social networks critically affects which content is widely available, frequently viewed and impactful (