You won't believe this!

The Psychology of Clickbait

Let’s talk about clickbait.

I’d like to tell you I’m above it. That I can spot the trick from a mile away and scroll past, while lesser mortals click. But I cannot. Every day, we lose eight minutes of our life to clickbait. That’s nearly six months of our life. Actually, I just made that number up.

But regardless of the actual amount of minutes wasted, they are regrettable. And whenever I fall for it, I judge myself for it. I suspect we all do.

We know better, and yet we can’t help it.

That’s because the reason that we’re so easily caught up by it isn’t necessarily that we are stupid, careless or gullible. It’s because we are curious and human. In fact, that’s the core mechanism that the, um, ‘fine purveyors of clickbait’ rely on.

There’s a gap between what we know and what we don’t know, and the brain has a cognitive itch to close it. Behavioral economist George Loewenstein’s research on ‘information gap theory’ in his 1994 paper, The Psychology of Curiosity, found that curiosity is triggered specifically by an awareness of missing information, not by the information itself. “You won’t believe what happened next” creates the gap without giving you anything to satisfy it, so the only way to close the loop is to click. It’s uncomfortable not to know WHAT REALLY HAPPENED NEXT.

We are also wired for loss aversion. Missing out is seen as a threat, even if we realize the answers are not likely to bring us much satisfaction. Which five mistakes ARE we making? What’s that one thing that everyone gets wrong? What is your doctor not telling you?

We can’t help but want to know what’s missing.

According to Kahneman and Tversky’s Prospect Theory losses feel roughly twice as powerful as equivalent gains. This includes informational loss: not knowing something feels like a deficit we’re particularly motivated to fix.

Evolutionary scientists would also suggest that we have an innate negativity bias since for much of human history the cost of not responding to potential threats was high. It’s better to pay attention to a false alarm than be caught up in a dangerous environment. Today, our nervous system continues to pay attention to anomalies—even if they come in the form of listicles that purport to tell you the “SHOCKING truth about…your dog.”

Clickbait headlines are designed to be processed quickly and emotionally, not analytically. A large study of New York Times articles found that emotionally charged content was more likely to go viral. According to the study content that “evokes high-arousal positive (awe) or negative (anger or anxiety) emotions is more viral. Content that evokes low-arousal, or deactivating, emotions (e.g., sadness) is less viral.”

Because it bypasses the cognitive processes that slow down our intake of information, our response is more automatic, reactionary, and emotional.

The skeptical part of our brains isn’t being welcomed in.

Headline writers, advertisers are particularly good at figuring out what triggers people to click. When I worked for an ad agency, I was told that people were more likely to click on odd numbers (eg. “7 ways to improve your life”). Apparently, their asymmetry grabs our attention more than even ones.

But recognizing the techniques will not necessarily inoculate you against them due to a psychological framework behavioral economists refer to as dual-process cognition. According to this theory, we operate in two modes:

System 1: The intuitive system. It’s automated, instant, emotionally responsive, and requires little effort.

System 2: The analytical system. It requires analysis, conscious mental efforts, reasoning, and operates more slowly, objectively, logically, and deliberately.

We rely on both systems in our daily lives—and both can be useful. System 1 allows us to respond to situations quickly and without constantly overloading our cognitive functions. It relies on mental shortcuts and it’s often effective. But certain situations require System 2, particularly when accuracy is particularly important.

If someone comes at you with a knife, you want to go with System 1 processing. When you’re trying to make a key decision for your business or life, you’ll probably want to go with System 2.

Clickbait is designed to trigger System 1 only.

So if recognition alone isn’t enough, what will help you bypass clickbait and System 1 activation?