Five reasons why we can’t resist a list

I am indeed writing a list about why we love lists…

However, if I was to write a normal article, it wouldn’t get as many likes, retweets or shares as I’m hoping this will get.

You can imagine our delight when we were commissioned to devise this video based around lists for The Jane Austen Centre in Bath. The video quickly and easily lists 10 things that they believe potential visitors would like to know, using a list approach means that before the viewer clicks they already know what to expect and by adding a number of points the list approach adds more precedence to the points that are about to be revealed. Lists are a very useful way of attracting an audience and here’s a list to tell you why:

1) List help us organise information

Whenever we are faced with lots of information our brain is designed to put stuff in order so we can make sense of it. With a list, our job is already done and this make information easier for us to understand by breaking the points down into bite size sections with each section becoming a informative series with it’s own beginning, middle and end.

2) Lists help us remember

It’s all up there… Literally. We love to write to-do lists, or shopping lists, and although most of us (me included) write a list purely for the satisfaction of ticking stuff off, they do actually help us with organisation and memory. If you write a shopping list, but forget to take it to the supermarket, you are more likely to remember most things on that lists from memory, than if you didn’t write a list in the first place.

3) Our attention spans are shrinking

Studies show that we now have an average attention span of around 8 seconds, that’s shorter than the average goldfish. Don’t panic though, this doesn’t mean we are going to be taken over by an army of goldfish in glass bowls. It just means that our brains have developed so fast that we can now very quickly identify what we do and don’t want to be engaged with. Lists are already organised, they save our brain time, and therefore we are more likely to engage with something for longer than 8 seconds if it’s in list form.

4) Easily sharable

Ever wondered why your social media is flooded with listicles? Well, a headline that contains a number is more eye-catching and because of this people love to share, like and favourite anything in list form.

5) No surprises

The good thing about a list is that you know what to expect, we are familiar with the layout of list. The numbers mean you know exactly where you are, and most importantly you know how long you have left to go.

There you go, a list about list. Think we’ve missed something? Tweet us: @DoubleshotTV