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Negative news headlines are more attractive: negativity bias in online news reading and sharing

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Abstract

Clickbait—online content designed to attract attention and clicks through misleading or exaggerated headlines—has become a prevalent phenomenon in online news. Previous research has sparked debate over the effectiveness of clickbait strategies and whether a bias toward negativity or positivity drives online news engagement. To clarify these issues, we conducted two studies. Study 1 examined participants’ preferences for news headlines, revealing a higher selection rate for negative headlines. This finding indicates a negativity bias in the news reading process and underscores the effectiveness of negative information in clickbait strategies. Study 2 simulated the process of news sharing and examined how participants generalize and report negative news. The findings show that participants amplified the negativity of the original news by using more negative terms or introducing new negative language, demonstrating an even stronger negativity bias during news sharing. These findings affirm the presence of a negativity bias in online engagement, in reading and sharing news. This study offers psychological insights into the clickbait phenomenon and provides theoretical support and practical implications for future research on negativity bias in online news.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to extend their sincere appreciation to Yue Wang, whose contributions were invaluable to this research endeavor but who is not listed as a co-author of this journal publication. Her feedback and technical assistance significantly enriched the quality of this study. Although not listed as an author, her contributions were indispensable and are gratefully acknowledged.

Funding

This work was supported by the Project of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education in China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72004244, 71874215, 72061147005), and the National Social Science Fund of China (20CSH030), this work received support from the Program for Innovation Research at the Central University of Finance and Economics.

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  1. Department of Psychology, School of Sociology and Psychology, Central University of Finance and Economics, No.39, Xueyuan South Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100081, China

    Mei Zhang, Haotian Wu, Yang Huang, Ruibing Han, Xinyuan Fu, Zhizhi Yuan & Shuer Liang

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Contributions

Conceptualization: [Mei Zhang]; Data collection: [Mei Zhang] [Haotian Wu]; Formal analysis: [Mei Zhang] [Haotian Wu]; Methodology: [Mei Zhang], [Xinyuan Fu]; Writing - original draft: [Haotian Wu], [Yang Huang]; Writing - review & editing: [Mei Zhang], [Xinyuan Fu], [Haotian Wu], [Yang Huang], [Ruibing Han], [Zhizhi Yuan], [Shuer Liang]. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xinyuan Fu.

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Zhang, M., Wu, H., Huang, Y. et al. Negative news headlines are more attractive: negativity bias in online news reading and sharing. Curr Psychol 43, 30156–30169 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-06646-6

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