An interesting thing in my Medium stats

Happy Friday,

I noticed an interesting thing in my Medium stats. Most of the stories that paid best have some element of negativity or controversy in the title.

For example, here’s some of my top stories, in random order:

• You Know That Charming Story About the Two Wolves? It’s a Lie.

• The Pied Piper Was Real: 130 Children Disappeared and Never Came Back

• If you think “toxic femininity” is real, you are part of the problem

• Hansel and Gretel Was A True Story And A Horrible Tragedy

• No, Anne Boleyn Was Not Black.

Every now and then I see posts lamenting all the “doom and gloom” posts on Medium and the internet as a whole.

You know why people write those, right?

Because they like to eat.

We are hardwired for negativity

You know what the negativity bias is, yes? Simply that the human mind tends to focus on the negative more than the positive.

We remember insults more than praise. We remember traumatic events more than joyful ones. And all the great reviews pale compared to the one horrible one.

You know why we’re so focused on the negative, right?

It’s a factor of evolution. The caveman ancestors who paid attention to bad, dangerous, and negative threats were the ones who survived to pass on their genes. Or so they say. :)

Scientific testing proves it. Psychologist John Cacioppo, did a study where test subjects viewed positive and negative input. Consistently, there was a stronger response in the cerebral cortex to negative input compared to positive.

In simple words, negativity lights up our brain.

We don’t have to be “doom writers” to use that concept. We don’t have to write drama and scandal. We don’t have to be Chicken Little screaming about the world ending.

None of my top paying stories are “omg, the world is ending” posts. They’re just stories about stuff that interested me.

Every title can be written more than one way

Mom used to tell us kids there’s more than one way to say anything. Of course, she meant not the rude way. lol.

Same concept works for titles, too.

You can’t get a read if you don’t first get the click.

Sometimes I think I should try to do that more often. When I look at all the duds that didn’t get very many clicks, they inevitably don’t tickle the negativity bias.

When I look at the titles that got most clicks, they usually do.

I’m curious — do you find the same?

Do your top stories have titles that push the negativity bias button in some way?

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More reading…

• Charles Dickens Was A Cruel Man With Bizarre Obsessions

• Ten Beautiful Thoughts Oscar Wilde Wrote While In Prison

• Real Dating Advice From A 1938 Magazine. Omg, Lol The Pics.

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P.S. If you’re reading this in email, click the title to get to the online version where you can leave comments, like on Medium.

xo,
Linda