When we see an article with a list attached to it, or an article based on a list, we're drawn to read or click on it.

New Yorker writer Maria Konnikova says we can't really help it: "there’s little that our brains crave more than effortlessly acquired data." She says our brains are so magnetized by the list-as-article because they pull us in with their differentiation, tell us it's easy to read, and feels better in our brains than actual prose.

Here's why.

1. It draws in our attention:
The things that actually capture our attention are the most conspicuous ones, the objects that suddenly change or standout among a background, as opposed to being camouflaged by other information.

"A headline that is graphically salient in some way has a greater chance of capturing our eye," Konnikova says, "and in an environment where dozens of headlines and stories vie for attention, numerals break up the visual field."

2. Lists are intriguingly ambiguous:
Lists get us to click without spelling the whole article out because we like headlines with the right balance being creative and uninformative.

3. It's organized:
Konnikova says:

it’s hard to memorize through brute force the groceries we need to buy. It’s easier to remember everything if we write it down in bulleted, or numbered, points. Then, even if we forget the paper at home, it is easier for us to recall what was on it because we can think back to the location of the words themselves.

4. Lists feel better:
Because paragraphs appear cluttered upon a screen. A list with its white-spacing feels cleaner and more intuitive to our brains. We're biased toward tasks that feel easy, and subconsciously back off from tasks that are difficult - psychologists call it fluency. When content is cleanly laid out and pre-digested, we reap the rewards of reading more quickly and at a much lower difficulty level.

So in essence, we love lists because our brains are always looking for the clearest path to the quickest reward, without the messiness of paragraphs.


[The New Yorker]