The Psychology of 'Clickbait' - 5 reasons why your brain wants you ...

Okay so, confession time - A part of me wanted to take this theory for a live-action test ride.

You have my unreserved apologies if the title just so happened to tantalise that deeply neurotic, post-millennial part of the brain that we all now unfortunately harbour, perhaps leading to a slightly enraged, self-loathing fuelled click onto this particular post. If it's any consolation, it was all in the name of Psychology (Cue: Lack-lustre cheers)

Anyhoo! If the aforementioned accurately describes you - Don't give up on us just yet, Interesting psychological-snippets are primed and ready to go.

So, without further ado, please welcome contestant number one:

'57 Celebrities who you wouldn't believe hunt HUMANS for sport!'

We all know that feeling, we've been through this enough times by now to know what depths of disappointment and bourgeois, first-world-self-loathing lie ahead of us were we to give in to the siren-call of the clickbait. Yet the primal instinct is strong, curiosity is banging at the door as our civilised mind battles to regain control of the cognitive-wheel.

But it's too little too late. The clickbait addict we tried so hard to resist has emerged from its murky corner, and now all that is left is 'Shia LaBeouf's' face, staring proudly out at you from his lofty #8 ranking. It happened again.

However, do not wallow in that self-loathing too long, for it turns out it's not our fault. It's our brains - they just can't help themselves. Blame them. And while doing so, keep an eye out for these five insidious psychological processes the next time you feel the 'Urge-To-Click'.

1) Titillating Our Curiosity:

Humans have a naturally curious nature, we owe much of our development – both cognitive and societal – to these curious tendencies, however, they do bring with themselves the odd caveat. Typically formatted 'Clickbait' titles tend to play on this tendency, using suggestive wording to pose deliciously unanswered questions to your inner 'ClickBaiter'.

And curiosity is far from a weakness of ours, in fact it's a profound, hard-wired result of our evolutionary heritage – 100,000's of years of survival mechanisms, all leading up to one irresistible nonsensical headlines' ability to hoover up our recklessly abandoned click-quotas. Knowledge historically equals more than power – knowledge equals survival. This makes sense of course when one berry may make a delicious mid-hunt snack, while the berry next-door would mean a slightly less-delicious, painful death.

It holds slightly less credence when applied to '15 celebrities you wouldn't believe are gay', however as with much of our cognitive heritage, we are working with now ancient biological hardware, one which, despite its frequent software patches, carries with it many of the structural patterns of an age long-gone. It should come as no surprise that some of its quirks fit decidedly awkwardly into our modern lives.

2) The Positivity / Outrage scale:

Researchers have found that - unsurprisingly - eliciting strong emotions such as extreme anger or pleasure, leads to a greater engagement from individuals with the material at hand. Therefore, for an article to gain true elevation within the 'Click-bait' pantheon of greats, it has to really push the emotional boundaries.

This instinctively makes sense - anything that can elicit an emotional response immediately demands attention. This initial emotional payoff then acts as the smell of a cigarette would to a recent ex-smoker - your brain begins to crave another hit of the chemical cocktail we experience as emotion, driving you to plunge deeper into the click-bait trap.

One group of researchers have coined the fantastically catchy-phrase: The 'Valence-Arousal-Dominance Circumplex' - which to me sounds like something between 50-shades of grey and WWE - in their search to further understand this phenomenon. Despite the mind-boggling word-scramble, the study makes for very interesting reading, and is referenced at the bottom of this post.

3) Odd-numbered lists:

So, this is an odd one (pun very much intended. I feel dirty). When empirically tested, odd-numbered lists perform consistently better than their even counterparts. Even when all other factors are controlled: Headline, Author, Article-content – The odd-numbered list tends to garner more attention. Take a look the next time you're absent-mindedly sifting through your favoured social-media fix, many authors now regularly utilise this subtle psychological trick. And at the heart of it, that's just what it is, a trick played on your unsuspecting grey-matter.

The purported driving force behind this phenomena – Trust. We tend to see even numbers as convenient, clean-cut and organised, whereas we often view odd-numbers as, well, odd and slightly out of place - that must denote authenticity, right? You may well be reading this thinking I've absolutely lost the plot - I'm considering the possibility myself – but its a subtle psychological trend with a strong experimental grounding. Here, take a look at an example:

'20 habits that help to ensure a happy life'
'17 habits that help to ensure a happy-life'

Which would you be most likely to choose? Statistics would suggest the second choice, but hey, I don't know what social-super-powers you guys might be harbouring. The Steem is strong with this one.

This is the same process that comes into play with the use of adjectives such as 'unusual' and 'obscure'. They pique your interest just enough to garner that much-coveted click from you.

Perhaps they should introduce some kind of fail-safe mechanism to give us more time to think these things through? Some kind of, double-click mechanism, wherein the first click would only prime the subject ready for the second click of approval, like Chris Tarrant's famous 'Who wants to be a Millionaire' patter. I'd call it, the double-click.

Any software developers interested in working with me on this possibly ground-breaking project, please do get in touch.

It's not all bad.

This article has presented three commonly used methods employed in the pursuit of one of the most valuable commodities present in our current online economical system - Attention. Yes, they are often used by 'Click-bait' articles - half-baked, poorly thought out pieces with no intention of following through on their powerful headlines (remind you of any recent - perhaps current - article you may have read?).

However! Despite this, these techniques are nothing more than that - techniques. Honest, well written pieces also employ similar tactics - and so they should. That's where our attention would ideally be placed, in places from which we can learn and grow as a result of encountering.

Blame The Brain.

So, it turns out it's not our fault, it's our brains. Like a trusting young puppy, our minds' wonderful, species-defining traits such as curiosity and trust are being cynically manipulated by the click-bait mafia. Hundreds of thousands of years of development, leading us out of the water, down from the trees, up from the ground, and eventually, to '13 things you WOULDN'T BELIEVE Britney Spears did last summer!'. Evolution really is a funny old thing.

.. What did she do last summer?

Follow me: @callumogilvy

Source material and further (Very interesting!) reading can be found at:

I hope you've enjoyed this post, as always any feedback (or just general chat) is more than welcome! If you found it bearable or perhaps even, dare I say, not bad? Then you're more than welcome to follow me for more weird and wonderful bits and bobs from the world of Psychology.

Have a wonderful day all.

The Psychology of 'Clickbait' - 5 reasons why your brain wants you to click.