7.1: Introduction to Visual Persuasion
- Page ID
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"People might decide not to read an article, or tune out the radio, but they won’t be able to unsee images that are published." - Margarida Alpuim and Katja Ehrenberg
The idea that humans are visual creatures is debatable, however, there are some fascinating facts about how humans process visual images. A team of neuroscientists from MIT found that the human brain can process entire images that the eye sees for as little as 13 milliseconds (Trafton). This is 13 one-thousandths of a second! We not only recognize images very quickly; we are also more likely to remember pictures than words. This phenomenon is known as the picture superiority effect: "It has been clearly established that pictures are remembered better than words in tests of recall and tests of item recognition" (Hockley 1351). Although there are several explanations as to why visual images are better remembered than words, it has become evident that our memories find pictures to be more elaborate, distinctive, or meaningful than words (Hockley 1351).
Visual images also affect our emotions. "When we 'see' an image, it's not just the visual cortex that's involved. The brain region for emotional processing - the amygdala - is also activated" (Alpuim and Ehrenberg). The amygdala is “considered the single most important region of interest in the brain when considering the impact of visual images on fear, anxiety, and pain” (Nanda et al. 40). Sub-cortical brain structures like the amygdala are shaped by evolution to generate emotional responses such as fear, anger, and disgust that are meaningful for survival and adaptation; "compared to words, pictures may be perceived as more biologically relevant and are therefore more capable of eliciting emotional reactions" (Feng et al. 338).
In addition to being memorable and emotion-evoking, pictures also have a "truthiness" effect (Newman et al. 1337). "Photos influence people’s judgments...and help people generate pseudoevidence to support claims" (1337). For example, people more often judged the claim “Macadamia nuts are in the same evolutionary family as peaches” to be true when the claim appeared with a photo of a bowl of macadamia nuts than when it appeared alone. The photo was related, but offered no proof (or disproof) of the claim. Related photos tend to inflate the subjective truth of claims (1337).
As advancements in printing, television, and digital media have made visual images easy to produce, reproduce and share, visual messages have proliferated. Because visual images can communicate multiple ideas rapidly and simultaneously, because they are more memorable, because they elicit emotional responses, and because they boost "truthiness", images are used heavily in advertising and other forms of persuasive communication.