A second (and arguably more important) reason for being concerned about interesting work is that recent psychological research suggests that materials that are perceived as interesting produce a higher degree of learning. Sansone and Thoman (2005), Silvia (2005), and others have recently provided conceptual discussions showing that experiencing interest is an emotion, and as such it plays a central role in people’s task performance. Interest fosters intrinsically motivated behavior on tasks and leads to greater persistence and longterm engagement with them. More specifically, with regard to reading and learning from written materials, research by Ainley, Hidi, and Berndorff (2002) sug- gested that the extent to which potential readers perceive an article’s topic and title as interesting influences the probability that they will read it, as well as the degree of positive affect that they bring to the reading. Positive affect, in turn, increases the persistence readers bring to a task, which ultimately affects the degree of learning. Thus, scholarly articles that are more interesting to their readers are more likely to induce positive affect and are also more likely to be read, understood, and remembered.