Clickbait Psychology: The Grammar of Urgency and Curiosity

16/08/2025 4 min
Clickbait Psychology: The Grammar of Urgency and Curiosity

Listen "Clickbait Psychology: The Grammar of Urgency and Curiosity"

Episode Synopsis

Why do we click on headlines we know are fake? Because clickbait isn’t about information — it’s about emotion.
In this episode, we explore how clickbait uses linguistic tricks — like the curiosity gap, false urgency, and personalisation — to hijack the five components of emotion: feeling, appraisal, action tendency, motor activity, and physiology.
Drawing from emotion science, we see how these headlines don’t just grab attention — they trigger real bodily responses.
A must-listen for anyone who’s ever thought, “Why did I just click that?” Listen if you want to reclaim your attention — one headline at a time.