Measuring the Psychological Characteristics of Titles of Journal Articles and their Subject Headings

Abstract

This paper gives the results of three measures given to 200 college students who rated the positivity of titles of articles and books shown either as full bibliographic citation or as title only. Half of the titles were taken from the university's academic library's section on humanitiessocial sciences, and the other half from the science-technology section. Several ANOVA tests are reported. Titles from humanities-social sciences were more correctly associated with their subject headings and were recalled better than titles from the science-technology area. The results are discussed in the context of a theory of titles that specifies three psychological characteristics of all titles that are present within the linguistic or bibliographic meta-information. The relationship of these characteristics to general features of human behaviour is specified as the affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor properties of titles.