When a claim about a new drug’s effectiveness was presented in text form, 67% of research participants said they believed it. But when the text was accompanied by a simple graph making exactly the same claim, 97% believed it, say Aner Tal and Brian Wansink of Cornell. Graphs’ persuasiveness has nothing to do with ease of understanding; instead, a graph signals to readers that the information has a scientific basis, making it more believable, the researchers say.
Source: http://pus.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/09/23/0963662514549688.abstract
