Have you ever wondered what drives your users to prefer one image over another? Or why did they click that specific creative and not the one that seemed to you the best of all?

Sometimes, the best marketing moves are those rooted deep within human psychology. The greatest marketers are those who have the most in-depth knowledge of how the brain works.

One of the key features of the human brain involves urgency.

In this article, we will explain how some psychological “shortcuts” can help the user take specific actions – the actions you want him to perform. And how you can remarkably increase your conversions.

How to capture users’ attention with psychology?

Certain types of images or particular phrases used in creatives are known to have a specific effect on the user’s psyche. 

We will call them “attention grabbers,” they exploit heuristics and the principle and operant conditioning, according to which the human brain is led to associate a reaction to a given stimulus. 

Attention grabbers hinge on some of the most substantial and most primitive feelings of the human being:

• anger and fear
• sadness and joy
• surprise
• disgust

Smart affiliates take advantage of these kinds of emotions to capture users’ attention because they are most likely to trigger biases.

How? For example, by taking one of these feelings to the extreme, as in the case of “scary” ads: