People like lists of things. They're everywhere on the internet. You name any subject matter you can think of, odds are there's a list about it. Nowhere is safe.
Even here, on the Guardian Science section, one of the most popular articles in recent months is a list. But why are lists so popular?
Well, here are 10 astonishing facts about lists that may help explain it.
1. People will tend to remember the first thing on a list
Lists are commonly used as tools for assessing people's memory. Word lists are a typical tool for testing someone's ability to remember and recall items, and can be designed and adapted to analyse a wide variety of human memory abilities.
One of the things uncovered by this sort of research is the primacy effect, meaning people are more likely to remember the first thing they are presented with, due to the way attention works and the demands of memory formation.
So when you try to tell someone about this list, you may end up saying "The first thing on the list was that you're more likely to remember the first thing on the list".
2. The human brain may automatically structure information in list form (although it may not)
Much research has been conducted into how humans store and structure their knowledge and thoughts. Collins and Quillan in 1969 proposed their Hierarchical Network model, where concepts and categories are stored at a certain level in the brain/mind and the properties of these are listed "below" (metaphorically).
However, this view has met with some criticism, mainly based on how human memory or knowledge is rarely shown to be so rigidly organised. Still, it shows how fundamental lists may be.
3. Lists take advantage of a limited attention span
There is an increasingly common view that internet use shortens a person's attention span. While a lot of this is Greenfield-esque paranoia about new technology, evidence suggests our visual attention is attracted to novelty, and on the internet novelty is always only a click away.
There is data to suggest that this is how internet use works, and much of the web is dedicated to exploiting this. Rather than paragraphs of narrative, pushing the limits of a typical attention span, lists offer novelty every few lines, and thus are more likely to avoid the dreaded TL:DR response.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider