Writer-reader contagion of inspiration and related states: Conditional process analyses within a cross-classified writer × reader framework.

A longstanding tradition in the humanities holds that a writer's inspiration is infectious, but this thesis has not been tested. We hypothesized that (a) inspiration is infectious, such that inspired writers are more inspiring to the average reader; (b) contagion is mediated by the insightfulness of the text; and (c) contagion is moderated by readers' openness to experience, such that open readers are more prone to contagion. To test these hypotheses, a sample of 195 student writers, each of whom wrote 1 poem, was crossed with a sample of 220 student readers, who read all poems.