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How Clickbait Works
Here’s what most people can agree on: Clickbait is annoying, but by god, it works—even when readers recognize it for what it is. The word’s substantial semantic drift [odlt.org] may be behind some of this effectiveness [theatlantic.com]. But a hefty helping of behavioral science is at play, too. As a number of new studies confirm, you can blame your clickbait habit on two things: the outsized role emotion plays in your intuitive judgements and daily choices, and your lazy brain.
Manufacturing Emotion
Clickbait doesn’t just happen on its own. Editors write headlines in an effort to manipulate you—or at least grab your attention—and always have. “Headless Body In Topless Bar [nytimes.com],” and “Sticks Nix Hick Pix [wikipedia.org]” wouldn’t exist if publications didn’t care about attracting eyeballs. The difference with clickbait is you’re often aware of this manipulation, and yet helpless to resist it. It’s at once obvious in its bait-iness, and somehow still effective bait.
This has a lot to do with emotion and the role it plays in our daily decision-making processes, says Jonah Berger [jonahberger.com], who studies social influence and contagion at the University of Pennsylvania. Emotional arousal, or the degree of physical response you have to an emotion, is a key ingredient in clicking behaviors. Sadness and anger, for example, are negative emotions, but anger is much more potent. “It drives us, fires us up, and compels us to take action,” Berger says. If you’ve ever found yourself falling for outrage clickbait [slate.com] or spent time hate-reading and hate-watching [jezebel.com] something, you know what Berger is talking about. “Anger, anxiety, humor, excitement, inspiration, surprise—all of these are punchy emotions that clickbait headlines rely on,” he says.
Other tactics include opening a Curiosity Gap, using Numbers and Lists, building Anticipation, and creating happiness by confirming expectations of clickbait. There you go, Ye Budding Marketroids, a how-to manual for casting effective Clickbait.
