HOW SENSATIONAL HEADLINES LEAD READERS ASTRAY

Maria Konnikova a Russian-American writer and journalist authored an informative piece on, “How Headlines Change the Way we Think” that was published in The New Yorker on December 17, 2014. In an effort to explain how misleading headlines can lead readers astray, the writer who primarily writes about psychology and literature, cites a test conducted by Ullrich Ecker a psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Western Australia.

Ecker, had people in Australia read either factual or opinion pieces where the only shifting variable was the headline. He concluded that a misleading headline hurt a reader’s ability to recall the article’s details. In another test he found out that initial impressions mattered and were not easily corrected.