The surprising take home from all this is that if you wish folks to
accept something as feeling true, then what one set out to do is to
associate a decorative photo with it. All of a sudden much of the
art of advertising makes ready sense. It also suggests that a
careful choice of image can set the mood. Most important of course,
those images create a desire to read and digest the text itself.
Ouch!
Advertising without an image is a bad idea.
Obviously there is some variation in our individual responses to
stimuli, but the image is really the lead driver, rather than some
rational decision chain. The image establishes trust. It does not
even have to be pertinent to the text involved.
ScienceDaily (Aug. 8,
2012)— A picture inflates the perceived truth of true and false
claims.
Trusting research over
their guts, scientists in New Zealand and Canada examined the
phenomenon Stephen Colbert, comedian and news satirist, calls
"truthiness" -- the feeling that something is true. In four
different experiments they discovered that people believe claims are
true, regardless of whether they actually are true, when a decorative
photograph appears alongside the claim. The work is published online
in the Springer journal, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
"We wanted to
examine how the kinds of photos people see every day -- the ones that
decorate newspaper or TV headlines, for example -- might produce
"truthiness," said lead investigator Eryn J. Newman of
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. "We were really
surprised by what we found."
In a series of four
experiments in both New Zealand and Canada, Newman and colleagues
showed people a series of claims such as, "The liquid metal
inside a thermometer is magnesium" and asked them to agree or
disagree that each claim was true. In some cases, the claim appeared
with a decorative photograph that didn't reveal if the claim was
actually true -- such as a thermometer. Other claims appeared alone.
When a decorative photograph appeared with the claim, people were
more likely to agree that the claim was true, regardless of whether
it was actually true.
Across all the
experiments, the findings fit with the idea that photos might help
people conjure up images and ideas about the claim more easily than
if the claim appeared by itself. "We know that when it's easy
for people to bring information to mind, it 'feels' right," said
Newman.
The research has
important implications for situations in which people encounter
decorative photos, such as in the media or in education. "Decorative
photos grab people's attention," Newman said. "Our research
suggests that these photos might have unintended consequences,
leading people to accept information because of their feelings rather
than the facts."
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