D Bad news sells. If it bleeds, it leads. Nonews is good news, and good news is no news. Those are the classic rules forthe evening broadcasts and the morning papers. But now that information isbeing spread and monitored(监控) in different ways, researchers are discovering new rules. Bytracking people’s e-mails and online posts, scientists have found that goodnews can spread faster and farther than disasters and sob stories. “The ‘if it bleeds’ rule works for massmedia,” says Jonah Berger, a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. “Theywant your eyeballs and don’t care how you’re feeling. But when you share astory with your friends, you care a lot more how they react. You don’t wantthem to think of you as a Debbie Downer.” zxx.k Researchers analyzing word-of-mouthcommunication—e-mails,Web posts and reviews, face-to-face conversations—found that ittended to be more positive than negative(消极的), but that didn’t necessarily mean people preferred positive news.Was positive news shared more often simply because people experienced more goodthings than bad things? To test for that possibility, Dr. Berger looked at howpeople spread a particular set of news stories: thousands of articles on TheNew York Times’ website. He and a Penn colleague analyzed the “most e-mailed”list for six months. One of his first finds was that articles in the sciencesection were much more likely to make the list than non-science articles. Hefound that science amazed Times’ readers and made them want to share thispositive feeling with others. Readers also tended to share articles thatwere exciting or funny, or that inspired negative feelings like anger oranxiety, but not articles that left them merely sad. They needed to be aroused(激发) one way or the other, and theypreferred good news to bad. The more positive an article, the more likely itwas to be shared, as Dr. Berger explains in his new book, “Contagious: WhyThings Catch On.” z.xxk 12 .Whatdotheclassic rulesmentionedinthetext apply to?