Journal Browser
Search
View All
Original Article
AI authorship labels and news sharing: When emotional narratives dissolve source boundaries

Yongjun Yu*

Faculty of Health and Wellness, City University of Macau, Macau 999078, China


Well-being Sciences Review 2026, 2(3),130-141; https://doi.org/10.67229/wsr.26070002
Submitted20 Mar 2026
Revised20 Mar 2026
Accepted15 Jun 2026
Published31 Jul 2026
+
Cite This Article
Abstract

When emotionally charged news floods social media, can a simple "AI-generated" label prevent users from sharing it? This study investigated how AI disclosure labels interact with narrative transportation to shape credibility perceptions and sharing intentions across three experiments (N1 = 218, N2 = 138, N3 = 145). Study 1 established the baseline psychological mechanism: narrative transportation significantly predicted both emotional responses and sharing intentions, yet a standard AI authorship label produced no meaningful effect on any outcome - Bayesian analyses confirmed substantial evidence for the null hypothesis. Study 2 introduced message credibility as a cognitive mediator, revealing a cognition-behavior dissociation: the AI label reduced perceived credibility, yet this cognitive signal was too weak to overcome emotional inertia and suppress sharing. Study 3 escalated the intervention to explicit warning labels, demonstrating that hard warnings significantly reduced message credibility and sharing intention, with credibility serving as a full mediator. Together, these findings suggest that intense emotional immersion induces heuristic processing that renders neutral disclosures effectively invisible, while forceful warnings successfully trigger systematic re-evaluation. The results carry direct implications for platform governance: in emotionally arousing contexts, neutrally worded AI labels are not merely ineffective - they may create a false sense of regulatory adequacy. Only high-intensity warnings can disrupt the automatic impulse to share AI-generated emotionally manipulative content.

REFERENCES

Appel, M., Gnambs, T., Richter, T., & Green, M. C. (2015). The transportation scale-short form (TS-SF). Media Psychology, 18(2), 243-266. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2014.987400

Appelman, A., & Sundar, S. S. (2016). Measuring message credibility: Construction and validation of an exclusive scale. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 93(1), 59-79. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699015606057

Banerjee, S. C., & Greene, K. (2013). Examining narrative transportation to anti-alcohol narratives. Journal of Substance Use, 18(3), 196-210. https://doi.org/10.3109/14659891.2012.661020

Bashardoust, A., Feuerriegel, S., & Shrestha, Y. R. (2024). Comparing the willingness to share for human-generated vs. AI-generated fake news. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 8(CSCW2), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1145/3687028

Bradley, M. M., & Lang, P. J. (1994). Measuring emotion: The self-assessment manikin and the semantic differential. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 25(1), 49-59. https://doi.org/10.1016/0005-7916(94)90063-9

Cao, Y., Li, S., Liu, Y., Yan, Z., Dai, Y., Yu, P., & Sun, L. (2025). A survey of AI-generated content (AIGC). ACM Computing Surveys, 57(5), 1-38. https://doi.org/10.1145/3704262

Carnahan, D., Ulusoy, E., Barry, R., McGraw, J., Virtue, I., & Bergan, D. E. (2022). What should I believe? A conjoint analysis of the influence of message characteristics on belief in, perceived credibility of, and intent to share political posts. Journal of Communication, 72(5), 592-603. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqac023

Chaiken, S. (1980). Heuristic versus systematic information processing and the use of source versus message cues in persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(5), 752. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.39.5.752

Chaiken, S., Liberman, A., & Eagly, A. H. (1989). Heuristic and systematic processing within and beyond the persuasion context. Unintended thought (pp. 212-252). Guilford Press.

Dorigoni, A., & Giardino, P. L. (2025). The illusion of empathy: Evaluating AI-generated outputs in moments that matter. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1568911. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1568911

El Ali, A., Venkatraj, K. P., Morosoli, S., Naudts, L., Helberger, N., & Cesar, P. (2024). Transparent AI disclosure obligations: Who, what, when, where, why, how. Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-11). https://doi.org/10.1145/3613905.3650750

Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 701-721. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.5.701Press.

Guo, Y., Yu, F., Lai, J., & Yuan, X. (2025). How is AIGC shaping the world: an analysis of bibliometrics. Information Research an International Electronic Journal, 30(iConf), 679-689. https://doi.org/10.47989/ir30iconf47227

Ha, S., & Ahn, J. (2011). Why are you sharing others’ tweets?: The impact of argument quality and source credibility on information sharing behavior. https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2011/proceedings/humanbehavior/4

Horne, B. D., Nevo, D., O’Donovan, J., Cho, J. H., & Adalı, S. (2019). Rating reliability and bias in news articles: Does AI assistance help everyone?. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference On Web and Social Media, 13, 247-256. https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v13i01.3226

Igartua, J. J., Wojcieszak, M., Cachón-Ramón, D., & Guerrero-Martín, I. (2017). “If it hooks you, share it on social networks”. Joint effects of character similarity and imagined contact on the intention to share a short narrative in favor of immigration. Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, (72), 1085. https://doi.org/10.4185/rlcs-2017-1209en

Iqbal, A., Shahzad, K., Khan, S. A., & Chaudhry, M. S. (2025). The relationship of artificial intelligence (AI) with fake news detection (FND): a systematic literature review. Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication, 74(5-6), 1617-1637. https://doi.org/10.1108/gkmc-07-2023-0264

Karnowski, V., Leonhard, L., & Kümpel, A. S. (2018). Why users share the news: A theory of reasoned action-based study on the antecedents of news-sharing behavior. Communication Research Reports, 35(2), 91-100. https://doi.org/10.1080/08824096.2017.1379984

Kim, J., Shin, S., Bae, K., Oh, S., Park, E., & del Pobil, A. P. (2020). Can AI be a content generator? Effects of content generators and information delivery methods on the psychology of content consumers. Telematics and Informatics, 55, 101452. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2020.101452

Kreps, Sarah E., McCain, Miles & Brundage, Miles (2022). All the news that’s fit to fabricate: AI-generated text as a tool of media misinformation. Journal of experimental political science, 9(1), 104-117. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3525002

Li, F., & Yang, Y. (2024). Impact of artificial intelligence-generated content labels on perceived accuracy, message credibility, and sharing intentions for misinformation: Web-based, randomized, controlled experiment. JMIR Formative Research, 8, e60024. https://doi.org/10.2196/60024

Liu, Y., Wang, S., & Yu, G. (2023). The nudging effect of AIGC labeling on users’ perceptions of automated news: Evidence from EEG. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1277829. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1277829

Longoni, C., Fradkin, A., Cian, L., & Pennycook, G. (2022, June). News from generative artificial intelligence is believed less. In Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (pp. 97-106). https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disclosure

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Disclosure. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved October 10, 2025, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disclosure

Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2021). The psychology of fake news. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(5), 388-402. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2021.02.007

Qu, G., Zhou, H., Wang, M., Yang, B., & Goh, T. (2022). Exploring the emotional responses induced by a real person chat and an AI chatbot assistant. ICERI Proceedings (pp. 288-293). https://doi.org/10.21125/iceri.2022.0113

Rouder, J. N., Speckman, P. L., Sun, D., Morey, R. D., & Iverson, G. (2009). Bayesian t tests for accepting and rejecting the null hypothesis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16(2), 225-237. https://doi.org/10.3758/pbr.16.2.225

Shen, F., Ahern, L., & Baker, M. (2014). Stories that count: Influence of news narratives on issue attitudes. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 91(1), 98-117. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699013514414

Sundar, S. S., Knobloch-Westerwick, S., & Hastall, M. R. (2007). News cues: Information scent and cognitive heuristics. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(3), 366-378. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20511

Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., Call, J., Behne, T., & Moll, H. (2005). Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28(5), 675-691. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x05000129

Vafeiadis, M., Han, J. A., & Shen, F. (2020). News storytelling through images: Examining the effects of narratives and visuals in news coverage of issues. International Journal of Communication, 14, 21 https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A635453967/AONE?u=anon~4237385d&sid=googleScholar&xid=27e5fc61

Ward, A. F., Zheng, J., & Broniarczyk, S. M. (2022). I share, therefore I know? Sharing online content-even without reading it-inflates subjective knowledge. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 33(3), 469-488. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4132814

Węcel, K., Sawiński, M., Stróżyna, M., Lewoniewski, W., Stolarski, P., Księżniak, E., & Abramowicz, W. (2023). Artificial intelligence-friend or foe in fake news campaigns. Economics and Business Review, 9(2), 41-70. https://doi.org/10.18559/ebr.2023.2.736

Winkler, J. R., Appel, M., Schmidt, M. L. C., & Richter, T. (2023). The experience of emotional shifts in narrative persuasion. Media Psychology, 26(2), 141-171. https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2022.2103711

Yamagishi, T. & Yamagishi, M. (1994). Trust and commitment in the United States and Japan. Motivation and Emotion, 18(2), 129-166. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02249397

Zhang, B., Chen, L., & Moe, A. (2024). Examining the effects of social media warning labels on perceived credibility and intent to engage with health misinformation: The moderating role of vaccine hesitancy. Journal of Health Communication, 29(9), 556-565. https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2024.2385638

Zhang, L., Shi, Y., & Cui, M. (2025). A bi-level multi-modal fake generative news detection approach: From the perspective of emotional manipulation purpose. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 12(1), 929. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05223-x

Zuckerman, A., & Chaiken, S. (1998). A heuristic-systematic processing analysis of the effectiveness of product warning labels. Psychology and Marketing, 15(7), 621-642. https://doi.org/10.1002/(sici)1520-6793(199810)15:7%3C621::aid-mar2%3E3.0.co;2-h

 

Copyright: © by the authors. Licensee ISTS. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
TOP