Using Negativity Bias In Titles

Jonathan Fields has an article up at Copyblogger about using Negativity bias to your advantage in writing titles for blog posts.  I urge you to read the article, and I think it can be expanded to include titles for stories and poems on YWS as well.

First, Wikipedia defines negativity bias as:

Negativity bias is the name for a psychological phenomenon by which humans pay more attention to and give more weight to negative than positive experiences or other kinds of information.

As Fields mentions, negativity bias isn’t a bad thing; it’s simply human nature.  We don’t wish harm upon others, and we certainly don’t want to see someone get hurt.  Yet, when something bad happens, we have an irresistible urge to find out what happened.

A little over a month ago, I wrote about how to write a good title.  In order to write a good title, you should be specific (although not overly so).  That is, if you simply say your title is going to be “Misery,” then the potential reader is going to have no idea what your story is about, and she will thus skip over it.

In addition to being specific, though, your title should also grab the reader’s attention.  This is where negativity bias comes in.  Pretend for a moment that you only have time to read one story.  Which of the following do you think most people will read:

• Love Denied and My Life’s Descent Into Total Agony
• My Life’s Descent

Since most poems and stories deal with repression, love, and anger, there is plenty of room to use negativity bias to one’s advantage.