😐️ Is this headline ethical?

🧪 HOOK SCIENCE

Get More Clicks With The “Negative Inversion” Hack — (I Was Nervous About Sharing This)

What do you think of this headline?

Not bad, right?

If I was a home aquarium owner who wanted healthy and happy coral, I’d be tempted to click.

But what about this:

All of a sudden, the content flips from intriguing to urgent.

The 7 tips provided might almost be the same.

But the second headline has a sense of risk, consequence, and loss.

All we’ve done is invert the tone of the headline from positive to negative… 

And we feel a sudden need to click on the content.

I call it the “negative inversion hack”.

More examples:

• Positive: “The 7 Secrets Of A Successful Organic Garden”

  • Negative: “The 7 Most Common Organic Gardening Failures (And How To Avoid Them)”

• Positive: “7 Bits Of Networking Advice That Boosted My Career”

  • Negative: “7 Bits Of Bad Networking Advice That Nearly Tanked My Career”

• Positive: “Top 5 Golf Swing Tips To Boost Your Par Performance”

  • Negative: “Top 5 Golf Swing Errors Ruining Your Par Performance”

Bottom Line: It’s effective.

Our pain of losing is twice as powerful than our pleasure of gaining — Loss Aversion.

But the question is:

Is this ethical?

Fearmongering is the reason a lot of mainstream content has become near-enough unbearable.

While we’d all love more clicks to our content, do we really need more negativity?

It’s a tough one.

Ultimately, fearmongering for the sake of it is never OK.

But highlighting real risks and consequences to your audience with the right intentions can really only be a good thing.

In fact, it may be the most effective way to get their attention and share your message.

If so — it’s probably worth doing (but not overdoing).