Which Words and Emotions to Use to Capture Your Audience's Attention

In a world where we are constantly bombarded with information, advertising, and content, capturing and holding the attention of your audience and potential customers has become a crucial factor for the success of any marketing or communication campaign.

But what makes some content more engaging than others?

A study sought to answer this question by analyzing both the effects of controlled experiments and natural language processing (NLP) of over 35,000 pieces of content and 600,000 reading sessions. The findings highlight the importance of emotional language and familiar words in capturing audience attention and offer practical insights on how to create more effective content.

The ease of processing a word and the emotion it evokes are therefore confirmed as the foundations of good copywriting.

But the devil is in the details.

Familiar words and emotional language at the heart of attention

Familiar and concrete words -- those the audience easily recognizes and that evoke clear mental images -- prove to be more engaging because they require less cognitive effort to understand. In short, our brains prefer to work in a simpler and more direct way.

However, it is not only familiar words that play a crucial role in engaging the audience -- emotionally charged language does too. Research has shown that the emotions evoked by language influence reader attention based on the degree of arousal and uncertainty they provoke. Words that evoke emotions such as anxiety, excitement, and hope are more effective at capturing attention, while sad language or excessively positive, resolved emotions tend to discourage it.

It is not just the emotional valence (positive or negative) of words that determines their impact, but rather the intensity of the emotion evoked and the sense of uncertainty it creates. This suggests that content capable of stimulating strong, engaging emotions will be more effective at capturing audience attention.

Practical implications

The results of this research confirm findings we have already discussed on Science Project. Which, in soft sciences like marketing, is always a great thing. Because it means we are realistically looking at a deep and solid psychological pattern. Decidedly universal. There is little doubt that this is a random result.

Condensing the advice into just five points, when we create content we should remember to:

1. Use familiar words. Where "familiar" means a word that requires few cognitive resources from the person reading or listening.
2. Use concrete words capable of evoking clear mental images.
3. Evoke stimulating, engaging, and "unresolved" emotions; not definitive ones. So hope is better than happiness, anxiety is better than sadness, excitement is better than satisfaction, doubt is better than negativity, empowerment is better than generic positivity.
4. Evoke strong emotions.
5. Adapt the content to the context and the audience. Consider the needs, expectations, and emotions of the audience you are addressing, adapting the language and tone accordingly.