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- Title
THE TREND TOWARD MORE ATTRACTIVE AND INFORMATIVE TITLES: AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST 1946-2010.
- Authors
WHISSELL, CYNTHIA
- Abstract
Titles of journal articles serve to attract attention and inform potential readers. All titles from 65 volumes of American Psychologist (1946-2010, N = 12,313 titles) were studied in terms of their emotionality, style, and contents. Several trends noted for titles in different kinds of journals from psychology and other disciplines were present in American Psychologist (increasing title length, increasing use of punctuation marks, increasing employment of words with pleasant and arousing connotations, variations in the frequency of different content words). Longer titles allow authors to specify more information, and emotionally upbeat titles are more likely to attract reader attention. In an unexpected quadratic trend, titles became more and the number of titles increased until about 1985, after which the trend was reversed and titles became more concrete as their numbers decreased. Predictors of this trend include societal variables and the journal's editorial policies.
- Subjects
TITLES of publications; PERIODICAL articles; AMERICAN Psychologist (Periodical); PSYCHOLOGY periodicals; PERIODICAL reading; ATTENTION; EDITORIAL policies
- Publication
Psychological Reports, 2012, Vol 110, Issue 2, p427
- ISSN
0033-2941
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2466/17.28.PR0.110.2.427-444