Claire Robertson

Claire Robertson

Claire Robertson appears on this site as first author of the 2023 Nature Human Behaviour paper on negativity and online news consumption.

Who they are

The work of Claire Robertson reaches this site through the paper listed below. On this site the name is tied to Negativity Bias.

Key papers

Robertson, C. E., Pröllochs, N., Schwarzenegger, K., Pärnamets, P., Van Bavel, J. J., & Feuerriegel, S. (2023). Negativity drives online news consumption. Nature Human Behaviour, 7(5), 812-822. What it reports: Analysed about 105,000 headline variations from 22,743 randomised tests on a news site, with roughly 5.7 million clicks. Headlines with more negative words drew higher click-through rates, and each added negative word raised the rate by about 2.3 per cent.

Key ideas

Negativity Bias: The tendency for negative information to carry more weight than equally strong positive information. This article follows it from the 2001 reviews to book sales and to the limits found in consumer settings.

Sources

  1. Robertson, C. E., Pröllochs, N., Schwarzenegger, K., Pärnamets, P., Van Bavel, J. J., & Feuerriegel, S. (2023). Negativity drives online news consumption. Nature Human Behaviour, 7(5), 812-822.