image by Chris Campbell/flickr

How can giving someone less information lead to better decision-making?

In Blink, Malcom Gladwell examines how snap-judgements are often more accurate than those we reach after careful analysis. He says that we often rely on too much information in order to make the correct decisions. Gladwell claims that instant decisions are often more reliable - provided we focus on looking at the right information.

So what exactly is the most significant information we can use to determine what articles will reach the front-page on social news sites?

If we look at Digg, Reddit and Propeller the only information that appears on all three sites is:

• The user who submitted the article
• The headline
• A link to the original article
• Comments

It doesn’t matter if you have great content or a top-user submits your article - if you don’t have a good headline there’s no incentive for a reader to click through to read the article - let alone vote for it. Copyblogger, Brian Clark, explains the importance of headlines:

“On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. This is the secret to the power of the headline, and why it so highly determines the effectiveness of the entire piece.

The better the headline, the better your odds of beating the averages and getting what you’ve written read by a larger percentage of people.”

Now that we’ve identified the most important piece of information - is it possible to instantly know which stories made the front-page of social news sites by only looking at their headlines? Take the Blink: Front-Page Quiz and find out.