The title of an article is the first chance at catching a reader’s attention. We set to develop a list of title attributes that lead to attractive titles in psychology papers, which could then be used to help instruct undergraduate students on how to write good titles for their papers and projects. Currently, research into successful elements that comprise an effective title is generally limited to publication metrics (the number of hits and citations an article has). Here, we created and administered a survey to 99 undergraduate students to rate the effectiveness of titles of psychology papers that varied in length, use of colons, acronyms, clichés, being results-oriented, and phrased the title as a question. We then reworded these titles as the opposite choice (e.g., we made a longer title shorter or took the colon out of a title without changing the meaning or length). We found that participants significantly preferred long over short titles, titles containing colons over the absence of a colon, and titles phrased as questions. We hope our results aid in the instruction of writing in the discipline, and that undergraduate psychology students and authors alike can develop more effective and attractive titles to attract attention from scholars and invite broader audiences to read their work.

中文翻译：

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我会读的！：什么标题元素会吸引读者阅读文章？

文章的标题是吸引读者注意力的第一个机会。我们着手制定一个标题属性列表，这些属性可以在心理学论文中产生有吸引力的标题，然后可以用来帮助指导本科生如何为他们的论文和项目编写好的标题。目前，对构成有效标题的成功要素的研究通常仅限于发表指标（一篇文章的点击次数和引用次数）。在这里，我们对 99 名本科生进行了一项调查，以评估长度不同、冒号使用、首字母缩略词、陈词滥调、以结果为导向的心理学论文标题的有效性，并将标题表述为问题。然后我们将这些标题改写为相反的选择（例如，我们将较长的标题缩短或从标题中去掉冒号而不改变含义或长度）。我们发现参与者明显更喜欢长标题而不是短标题、包含冒号的标题而不是没有冒号的标题，以及作为问题的标题。我们希望我们的结果有助于该学科的写作教学，并希望本科心理学学生和作者都能开发出更有效、更有吸引力的标题，以吸引学者的注意力并邀请更广泛的读者阅读他们的作品。