While surfing the internet, you see dozens of articles every day. But you don’t click on them all: only a few catch your attention, and you only read those. You probably don’t know why you do this—why only some of the articles, out of all the others, catch your attention. However, there’s a scientific basis behind this: some headlines are created using psychological techniques to capture your attention and keep you focused, and this is done by the major media outlets as well as niche businesses like Spin City casino. Here, we’ll take a look at these techniques and reveal the “secrets” of viral headlines.
Creating a Viral Headline
Humans have many limited resources, and attention is one of them. It’s impossible to approach everything we see with the same level of attention—our brains decide which items require more attention without us even realizing it. Here are some of the techniques viral headlines use to get you to focus on them:
1. Visual salience
This is a simple technique, but it’s still used because it works. Even if you understand how it works, it will still work. Text formatting is very effective at capturing our attention, and we tend to focus more quickly on things written in capital letters and containing numbers. Therefore, almost all headlines use capital letters and include at least one number.
2. Positivity & negativity bias
Positivity bias is based on a theory called benign violation. Violation represents a belief in how the world should be. We approach anything that threatens this belief with hostility. However, if we understand that the threat will actually produce a positive outcome, we become attracted to it. Negativity bias, on the other hand, means creating a direct threat—we are biologically conditioned to learn what that threat is. If we use these theories in headlines:
- Positivity bias headline: “10 Tips That Will Change Your Life.” It starts out as if it’ll change your beliefs about how the world should be, but you realize it’s a positive change.
- Negativity bias headline: “5 Mistakes You’re Making When Trying to Sleep.” The headline directly addresses you and poses a threat. Your brain can’t rest until it understands what it is.
Note the use of visual salience in these headlines: many of these techniques are used together, making them even more effective.
3. Unexpected pairings & curiosity gap
Using unrelated content within the same headline attracts attention because your brain can’t make sense of what you’re reading—it encourages you to read on to understand the meaning. For example, consider a headline like “financial secrets I learned from pumpkins.” If you decide to read it, it’s not simply curiosity; your brain doesn’t understand what’s being said and wants you to keep reading to figure it out.
The curiosity gap works in a similar way, but it’s less subtle. For example, a headline like “you won’t believe what happened next” directly appeals to your curiosity, making you want to know “what happened next,” even though you know it’s a bait. The headline is designed to create a gap, and your brain wants to fill it—it won’t rest until you do.
4. Authority & loss aversion
You may not be comfortable with authority, but this applies to face-to-face encounters with an authority figure. Your brain is eager to listen to the opinions of “experts” because it’s conditioned to believe that information from experts is more accurate and consistent. That’s why you see so many headlines with “expert” in them (experts agree, experts say, etc.), and you find yourself clicking on them.
Loss aversion, on the other hand, is a technique used to directly appeal to our reptilian brain and is frequently used in CTAs (call to action). These types of headlines encourage us to take action (and take action immediately) by threatening potential loss. For example, a headline that begins with “don’t miss out…” is using exactly this technique. To avoid feelings of regret and gain a potential advantage, your brain directs you to click on these headlines.
5. Tribalism & identity
Headlines that emphasize group identity appeal to specific communities, and those communities invariably click on them—even if they don’t know why. For example, if you are a lawyer, you would definitely click on a title like “5 things lawyers should know.” This is because of more than professional curiosity. Groups (including professional groups) are essentially tribes, and we’re conditioned to learn the information shared within them. If we don’t click on such a headline, it means we’re no longer part of the tribe, and our brains can’t accept it.
This applies to society as a whole to some extent. Everyone clicks on headlines that contain insider knowledge or confessions because they emphasize that we can learn information normally available only to a limited number of people. This kind of information makes us feel exclusive—we become part of that social circle, even if only for a short time. For example, even if you’re not a CEO, you’ll click on a headline like “7 secret tricks of CEOs” because it promises access to “secrets” known only to a select few.
Delivering What Is Promised: The Real Trick
A headline created using these techniques may get people to click on it, but if it turns out to be just bait, that success won’t last long. Furthermore, such bait could even lead to the website using that headline never being visited again. In other words, the content promised in the headline must be included in the article.
If you promise CEOs’ secret tricks, you must list them. If you say, “you won’t believe what happens next,” you must share truly unbelievable content. Otherwise, you’ll be labeled a “liar” in the visitor/reader’s mind because you’re wasting their time, and you’ll never be visited again, no matter how compelling your headlines. Therefore, it’s essential to deliver what you promised with the bait, at least to a certain extent.