Top 10 Lists and Why We Can’t Resist Them
 | Why We Can’t Resist “Top 10” Lists Surfing any major news website or portal, you’re bound to come across plenty of “top 10” lists. These lists tend to be either tutorials (i.e top 10 ways to lose weight), reviews (i.e top 10 SUV’s) or information (i.e top 10 pictures of 2011)… top 10 articles So what is it about top 10 lists that catches our eyes? Why is it mostly “Top 10” and not “Top 9 or 8…”? The answer is simple: The abundance of information in today’s world makes learning and keeping track of information increasingly difficult. Although it seems that this overload of information should be a blessing (we have all the information in the world at our finger-tips), it makes finding high quality and reliable information increasingly difficult. Wikipedia found a great solution for that (crowdsourcing quality control), and Google are continuously working towards that (making sure search results contain high quality and relevant information), but amongst the never-ending information, finding what we need can be increasingly difficult. Time is another barrier: Many of our day-to-day lives are so busy that we don’t have a choice other than looking for short cuts. The more info we can consume in a short period of time- the better! So why are Top 10 listsso great? Here are the top 5 (got you there didn’t I?) reasons that make top 10 lists so great: 1) 10 is a number- Duh… What I mean to say is that numbers comfort us, because they represent order in a very in-orderly world 2) 10 is a round number- which has such great cultural significance (metric system anyone?) that it appeals to us naturally. 3) 10 is easy to remember- A checklist of 10 is still usually easy enough to remember and even follow up(Good luck checking out the list of top 100 web hosting providers… we don’t need so much info) 4) 10 is perceived as short- And can usually be read in a matter of minutes 5) 10 is informative- Despite being easy to remember and short, 10 is long enough to actually contain valuable information So what’s the bottom-line? Top 10 lists appeal to our aspiration for order and our lack of time, which is what makes them so great. So next time you see an article about the “top 10 ways to lose weight” or “top 10 ways to save money” check them out- you might just learn something! top 10 ways |
