In 1885, psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus uncovered something fundamental about memory. After memorizing lists of nonsense syllables, he tracked how quickly they faded. Within an hour, nearly half were gone; by the next day, about 70% had vanished. This “forgetting curve” revealed that the brain is designed to let most things go.
Forgetting is how the brain stays efficient. By filtering and prioritizing, our minds conserve energy for what matters most. That same mechanism has fueled human progress, from building civilizations to landing on the moon, and it still shapes how people engage with your content today.
For marketers, that brings both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge? Most of your content will be forgotten by tomorrow. The opportunity? Design with the brain in mind, and you align with how people naturally pay attention and remember.
Here are seven psychology hacks that feel almost illegal to know, because once you do, you’ll never look at content the same way again.
- Relevance: The brain’s first filter
For most of human history, survival meant separating signal from noise. Our ancestors couldn’t process everything around them, so they focused only on what mattered: predator, food, danger.
That wiring is still with us. The brain filters ruthlessly, noticing what feels urgent or emotional and discarding the rest. Psychologists call this selective attention—our built-in way of saving energy.
Today the inputs are different: push notifications, endless feeds, crowded inboxes. The average person sees 4,000–10,000 brand messages a day, and the brain responds the same way it always has, by filtering most of them out.
How to signal relevance:
- Audience’s agenda: Use headlines that reflect the reader’s priorities, not yours.
- Don’t burry the lead: Call out the audience directly in the headline, intro, or subhead.
- Make the stakes clear: People lean in when they sense urgency, opportunity, or risk.
- Clarity: The antidote to uncertainty
The human brain has evolved to conserve energy, which is why uncertainty feels so costly. Psychologists call this the uncertainty effect: when signals are confusing or ambiguous, we stall or avoid decisions to save fuel. Ambiguity triggers stress because the brain can’t predict outcomes.
When a title is long, jargon-heavy, or lifeless, the brain makes a snap judgment: this will cost more energy than it’s worth. We’re wired to conserve resources, so we instinctively avoid what looks draining.
Clarity flips that response. Simple steps, clean visuals, and structured frameworks reduce strain, create psychological safety, and make people far more likely to engage.
Examples:
Boring / long: “Content marketing applications: Emerging AI capabilities and their impact on customer engagement.”
Simple & compelling: “5 AI marketing tools you haven’t tried yet (but should).”
Why this happens:
- Cognitive economy: Clunky titles signal too much effort.
- Loss aversion: If the reward isn’t clear, we won’t risk wasting time.
- Pattern recognition: If the title feels flat, we assume the content is too.
Clarity doesn’t just aid understanding, it reduces stress and makes people feel safe to engage.
- Agency: The fuel for motivation
Humans are wired to seek control over their environment. When people feel agency, the amygdala’s threat response calms, lowering stress and resistance.
Content that empowers (“Here’s how leaders like you are approaching this challenge”) frames the audience as active participants, not passive recipients. That shift transforms insights into action – it’s no longer your idea, it’s my choice.
According to Self-Determination Theory, motivation has three key components:
- Autonomy: Content that empowers (vs. dictates) feels more engaging.
- Competence: Content that builds skills or offers practical tools makes people feel capable.
- Relatedness: Content that connects to shared struggles or communities makes people feel seen.
When content helps people see themselves in the solution, it builds stronger, lasting connection.
- Emotion: The memory anchor
The amygdala, which is about the size of an almond, tags experiences with emotional significance and tells the hippocampus, “keep this.” That’s why special events like weddings stick in your memory while last Tuesday’s lunch disappears. Emotion is the brain’s highlighter.
Emotion also drives decision-making, surprisingly. Antonio Damasio’s famous research (Descartes’ Error) found that patients with damaged emotional centers could reason logically but struggled to choose. Without emotion, options lack value.
Emotional cues also grab attention faster than neutral ones. We’re wired to notice a smile or a cry before a random object because emotions once signaled survival.
For marketers, the lesson is: Stories, metaphors, and tension give the brain something sticky to hold on to. Content that makes people feel curiosity, urgency, relief, or inspiration doesn’t just inform, it moves.
- Novelty: The brain’s attention magnet
For most of human history, survival depended on noticing change. A rustle in the grass or a strange smell in the air might mean danger or dinner. Our brains are still wired to treat novelty like a high-priority alert.
Psychologists call, our attraction to the new this neophilia. It’s why humans have always explored, invented, and chased variety.
Novelty even alters our experience of time. Neuroscientist David Eagleman found that new experiences making moments feel fuller and more memorable. This is why which is why childhood summers felt endless while adult weeks blur together.
For marketers, novelty jolts people out of autopilot, so a counterintuitive claim or a surprising stat will light up the brains reward center.
Anchor the unexpected to something clear and familiar, and you’ll create content that feels fresh without losing focus.
- Social currency: Ideas worth passing on
Humans have always told stories around fires, in markets, in temples. Storytelling wasn’t just entertainment, it was how people remembered who to trust, how to behave, what to fear. The better your story, the stronger your standing.
We’re constantly (consciously and unconsciously) building reputation and trust within our networks. Today, sharing an article or stat serves the same purpose. It’s social currency: a way to signal, I’m informed. I’m helpful. I’m in the know.
People share content when:
- It makes them look smart. (“Look at this fresh insight I found.”)
- It makes them look generous. (“Here’s a tool that could help you.”)
- It makes them look “in the know.” (“I’m plugged into trends before others.”)
That’s why the best content isn’t just insightful, it’s sharable by design. Influence multiplies when your ideas carry into new conversations.
- Cognitive ease: Making ideas feel true
Fluency, or how easy something feels to process, shapes whether we trust it. Psychologists call this cognitive ease.
Your brain is only about 2% of your body weight, but it burns roughly 20% of your daily energy. Evolution solved this by wiring us to save mental energy wherever possible. Anything that feels fluent or familiar is like switching the brain into low-power mode. Anything that feels complex or uncertain lights up the warning systems and drains fuel.
When something feels simple, familiar, or fluent (like clear writing or clean design), our brain processes it with less effort. This creates a sense of comfort, trust, and even believability.
Repetition also has a similar effect. Hearing the same statement multiple times makes us more likely to believe it, a bias called the illusory truth effect. Evolutionarily, repetition signaled safety: if your tribe kept repeating something, it was probably important to remember.
Takeaways:
- When ideas feel effortless to absorb, the brain treats them as more trustworthy and easier to remember.
- The classic rule of 7: Research dating back to the 1930s shows that people often need to encounter a message around seven times before it feels familiar enough to notice, trust, and act on.
The bigger picture
Marketers already feel like they’re on a treadmill of constant production. With AI, that treadmill speeds up: more content, more campaigns, more, more, more.
The fear? That quality, creativity, and strategy get lost in a flood of words. Which is exactly why the marketer’s role has to evolve. AI is trained on probabilities, not purpose. It can remix patterns but doesn’t inherently know why something matters right now. It’s up to humans, and you, marketers, to bring the discernment and choose what’s meaningful.
