PsychologicalDUAL-USE

Picture Superiority Effect

What it is

Pictures are remembered far better than the same content presented as words, so the image attached to a message outlasts its text — including the caveats, the numbers and the question of whether the image was evidence of anything.

How it works

Shepard showed in 1967 that people who had looked through some six hundred pictures could pick the ones they had seen from new ones with close to perfect accuracy, clearly better than they managed for words or sentences. Standing extended this in 1973 to ten thousand pictures viewed for a few seconds each, with recognition still far above anything found for verbal material. Paivio's dual-coding account explains it: a picture is stored both as an image and as a verbal label, giving two routes back to it, while a word usually gets only one; Nelson and colleagues added that pictures are simply more distinctive from one another than words are. The consequence for persuasion is that the picture is what survives. The statistic, the qualification and the caption fade, and the photograph stands in for the whole. Newman and colleagues showed in 2012 a related effect on belief: a photograph that proves nothing still raises the rate at which people judge a claim true.

Real-world examples

  • •Standing's 1973 participants viewed up to 10,000 photographs over several days and still recognised the large majority in forced-choice tests, a capacity no word list has matched.
  • •Pictorial cigarette-pack warnings, first required in Canada in 2001, are noticed and recalled more than text-only warnings in the evidence reviewed by Hammond in 2011 — the effect used for a disclosed public-health purpose.
  • •Health communicators use pictographs for medication instructions; Houts and colleagues' 2006 review found pictures improved recall and adherence, particularly for patients with low literacy.
  • •A news story illustrated with a stock or unrelated photograph — a crowd from a different event, a generic image of a needle — is later remembered as if the photograph documented the claim.
  • •Campaigns on every side of the immigration, abortion and war debates choose a single unrepresentative photograph because they know it will be recalled after the accompanying figures are gone; the memorability is the same whether or not the image is typical.

Ethical guidelines

Where the line is

Choosing a representative, honestly labelled image so that a true message is remembered is good communication; choosing an atypical, unrelated or staged image because it will outlast the facts beside it, or attaching a photograph that proves nothing to make a claim feel true, is manipulation.

  • ●Use images that are representative of what the data show; the image is what your audience will keep, so an atypical image is a misstatement even beside an accurate caption.
  • ●Label illustrative, staged, archival and generated images as such, in the image frame and not only in the caption, because the caption is the part that will be forgotten.
  • ●Do not pair a claim with a photograph that proves nothing in order to borrow the credibility a photograph confers.

How to defend against it

  • ►When what you remember of a story is a picture, treat that as a fact about memory; go back and find what was actually claimed and what the numbers were.
  • ►Ask of any image what it is evidence of: who took it, where, when, and whether it depicts the event in the text. A reverse image search is the lateral-reading move for photographs.
  • ►Ask for the base rate behind the vivid case: one photographed victim, beneficiary or offender tells you nothing about how many there are.
  • ►Notice decorative photographs next to factual claims; a picture of a thermometer does not make a claim about temperature more likely to be true, though it will feel that way.

References

  1. Shepard, R. N. (1967). Recognition memory for words, sentences, and pictures. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 6(1), 156-163
    Near-perfect recognition of previously seen pictures, exceeding recognition of words and sentences.
  2. Standing, L. (1973). Learning 10,000 pictures. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 25(2), 207-222
    Recognition memory for pictures remains high even with 10,000 items.
  3. Paivio, A. (1971). Imagery and Verbal Processes. Holt, Rinehart & Winston
    The dual-coding account of why pictures are remembered better than words.
  4. Nelson, D. L., Reed, V. S., & Walling, J. R. (1976). Pictorial superiority effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 2(5), 523-528
    The sensory-distinctiveness account and the naming of the effect.
  5. Newman, E. J., Garry, M., Bernstein, D. M., Kantner, J., & Lindsay, D. S. (2012). Nonprobative photographs (or words) inflate truthiness. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19(5), 969-974
    Photographs that provide no evidence still increase judgments that a claim is true.
  6. Hammond, D. (2011). Health warning messages on tobacco products: A review. Tobacco Control, 20(5), 327-337
    Pictorial pack warnings are noticed and recalled more than text-only warnings.
  7. Houts, P. S., Doak, C. C., Doak, L. G., & Loscalzo, M. J. (2006). The role of pictures in improving health communication: A review of research on attention, comprehension, recall, and adherence. Patient Education and Counseling, 61(2), 173-190
    Pictures improve recall of and adherence to health instructions, especially at low literacy.
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