Numbers describe how common something is, and a story makes one outcome concrete. Asking which persuades more sounds like a single question, but persuasion is not a single thing. What does each of them move?
Curiosity counts. Here is the answer.
It depends what you measure, and that is the interesting answer. Pooling many studies of health messages shows there is no single winner. Statistical evidence was stronger at changing belief and attitude, that is, at how real someone thinks the risk is. One person’s testimony was stronger at moving intention to act. The plausible explanation is that a number answers the question of how common this is, and a story answers the question of what it looks like when it happens to me. The caveat: intention is not behavior, and the gap between them is well documented and wide.
Each wins a different measure. When many studies were pooled, was stronger at changing belief and , and was stronger at changing . Numbers aim at a general judgement, while a story makes an outcome tangible and engages feeling, which is what brings a person closer to a decision.
The move that turns this into a testable question is separation. Instead of asking which persuades more, the researchers broke persuasion into three different things: what a person believes is true, what their attitude toward it is, and what they intend to do. Those are three questions, and no one answer need fit all of them.
Numbers work well on the first. Someone who did not know how common something is and receives a figure updates the picture. That is exactly what statistical evidence provides, namely a scale. What it does not provide is a sense of what it looks like, which is why it can sound true and remote at once.
A story works well on the third. One case teaches nothing about frequency, and it does make the outcome tangible and lets you picture yourself inside it. That is what moves a person from agreement in principle to an intention to do something, and it is why health messages use personal testimony.
The caveat runs both ways. Intention is not behavior, and the gap between them is wide, so an advantage in shifting intention is not an advantage in shifting deeds. On the other side a single story can mislead in exactly what numbers are good at, so a responsible message joins the two: a story to make it vivid, a figure to keep the proportion.
wat. Numbers changed more of what people believed; stories changed more of what they intended to do.
wat wat
A responsible message can show one case to make it vivid, and give the numbers to keep the proportion.
How do we know?
A meta-analysis compared the effect of statistical and narrative evidence separately on beliefs, attitudes and intentions in health messages.
What is still unknown
Intention is not actual behavior, and the studies covered a very wide range of health messages.
Learn something?
Where to next
What happens when a story makes you forget the room you are in?story
How does a story change a mind without presenting a single argument?persuasion
What did researchers find in blood samples from perfectly healthy people?health