Abstract
Many online information systems are delivering personalized news to users today. The essence of this personalization process is to match a news article to the reader’s self-identity. However, prior studies mostly focus on matching a positive news story to a person’s desired identity. No known research has discussed the possibility of matching a negative news story to a person’s undesired identity. This study aims to fill this theoretical gap by testing a three-way interaction effect among news valence, identity desirability, and uniqueness on attitude toward the news story. Through a 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment, it is shown that a positive news story tends to generate a more favorable attitude when matched to the reader’s desired self-identity, whereas a negative news story will generate a more favorable attitude when matched to the person’s undesired self-identity, and such an effect is especially pronounced when the identity is unique. Perceived news credibility is found to partially mediate these effects.