The worst news ever: Negative headlines outperform positive ones | Poynter.

The worst news ever: Negative headlines outperform positive ones | Poynter.: Put the brakes on your uplifting-content startup! The firm Outbrain found in two studies that headlines with “negative superlatives” vastly outperformed those with positive words:

Compared with headlines that contained neither positive (“always” or “best”) nor negative (“never” or “worst”) superlatives, headlines with positive superlatives performed 29% worse and headlines with negative superlatives performed 30% better. The average click-through rate on headlines with negative superlatives was a staggering 63% higher than that of their positive counterparts.