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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

It’s bad! Awful! Negative headlines draw more readers

People scrolling online news are 1% less likely to click on an article for each positive word in its title.
Worried young woman reading bad news on the phone.

Analysis of online news headlines found that those that include negative words are more likely to draw readers than headlines than do not. Credit: Getty

Why are most headlines filled with gloom? It might be because people find bad news more interesting than good news. A study has now shown that news headlines containing negative language are more likely to be clicked on than those containing positive words1.

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Nature 615, 769 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00775-x

References

  1. Robertson, C. E. et al. Nature Hum. Behav. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01538-4 (2023).

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