Jesse E. answered • 07/23/19
Masters in Chemistry and Bachelors in Biology
The trend is that electronegativity increases as you go up a group and across a period. This is due because the electronegativity can be seen as how strong an element has for electrons. This makes sense because the halogens want another electron to have eight electrons. Therefore, these elements will have a high electronegativity then the first group elements. Another factor is the size of the element. I like to tell students to think of this as the smaller the size of an element the stronger the pull of electrons will be toward the protons in the nucleus. Therefore, the earlier elements, with their small size, will have a larger electronegativity than the elements toward the bottom of the table.
