

Can a Font Make Us Believe Something Is True? - pmcpinto
http://eyeondesign.aiga.org/can-a-font-make-us-believe-something-is-true/

======
dmd
I did an experiment like this in the mid-90s as an undergraduate for a
research methods lab assignment.

I showed true and made-up (NPR Wait Wait style) articles to elderly people
(over 70, in a care home), printed in one of 3 formats - on newsprint in the
font the NY Times uses, on glossy paper in a somewhat 'friendly' font (like
comic sans, but less so), and finally in dot matrix, on green-and-white
fanfold, all upper case.

There were remarkably few differences in the first two, for either true or
false stories, but NEARLY EVERYONE (like, > 85%) rated the computer fanfold
printed stories as being true.

One person's reaction has stuck with me to this day: "If it weren't true, the
computer would have rejected it!"

~~~
kristopolous
over 70 years of age or over 70 sample size?

~~~
CodeWriter23
I'm gonna go with age because of the qualifier "in a care home"

~~~
smorrow
Maybe his thought process was that giving the age twice ("elderly" and then
"70" \-- do you need both?) would be redundant, so that the redundant number
might not be an age.

~~~
kristopolous
Indeed. I also consider 70 to be pretty young for a retirement home.
Statistically speaking, I assume the vast majority of 70 year olds (95+%) are
living independently. So I thought either OP is being redundant and low-
balling or giving a sample size. Didn't know.

Btw, through a quick web-search, it appears the average for new residents is
mid-80s.

------
Semiapies
Blogspam for a 2012 article:
[http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2012/08/08/hear-...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2012/08/08/hear-
all-ye-people-hearken-o-earth)

Part 2:
[http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2012/08/09/hear-...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2012/08/09/hear-
all-ye-people-hearken-o-earth-part-2/?_r=0&referrer=)

~~~
logicallee
>Blogspam

This word really isn't appropriate. (Similar to my thoughts here -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9572254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9572254)
).

The article here is interesting, approachable and good. Of course, your links
add to it, it's the source mentioned in the first paragraph. But we can still
read interesting secondary sources.

~~~
Semiapies
It doesn't add anything significant that's not in the original article. Worse,
unlike most blogspam, it doesn't even directly _link_ to the original article.

~~~
monochromatic
And, bafflingly, it doesn't even give examples of all the fonts.

------
analog31
More than 20 years ago, at the company where I was working, I needed to order
some sort of expensive thing. Printing a purchase order on the dot matrix
printer connected to our accounting computer was a hassle, so I duplicated the
form in whatever word processing program we were using on the Apple Mac. It
even said Purchase Order at the top.

I faxed it to the vendor, and received a reply: "We will ship the item when we
receive a copy of the actual purchase order."

I did nothing but re-print the order in Courier font, and faxed it to them. It
was just the ticket. The boss said, "Now you know why we keep that old dot
matrix printer on the accounting computer."

------
taylorfausak
I liked the article, but I did not like the eye in the header blinking at me
as I read it.

~~~
cocoflunchy
Same here, luckily I have a very handy bookmarklet (that I probably found here
at some point) to delete any DOM element on the page:

    
    
        javascript:(function(){document.styleSheets[0].addRule(".highlighted_to_remove","background:red !important");var e=function(e){if(e.keyCode==27){i()}};document.addEventListener("keydown",e);var t=function(e){e.stopPropagation();this.classList.add("highlighted_to_remove");return false};var n=function(e){e.stopPropagation();this.classList.remove("highlighted_to_remove");return false};var r=function(e){this.parentNode.removeChild(this);i();e.preventDefault();e.stopPropagation();return false};var i=function(){var i=0;var s=document;while(s=document.body.getElementsByTagName("*").item(i++)){s.removeEventListener("mouseover",t);s.removeEventListener("mouseout",n);s.removeEventListener("click",r);s.classList.remove("highlighted_to_remove")}document.removeEventListener("keydown",e)};var s=0;var o=document;while(o=document.body.getElementsByTagName("*").item(s++)){o.addEventListener("mouseover",t);o.addEventListener("mouseout",n);o.addEventListener("click",r)}})()

~~~
savanaly
Alternatively, right click the element and choose inspect element, then add
"display: none" to its css rules.

~~~
vjeux
Even easier, right click, inspect element and hit the delete key :)

------
callum85
“It’s absurd to think that we would be nudged by one typeface over another,
into believing something to be true. Something disturbing about it, I’d go so
far to say.”

It's really not disturbing.

It's obvious that the way something is presented can affect your judgement
about things like the motives (or credibility or even identity) of the person
saying it, and it's obvious that this will in turn affect whether you believe
what you're being told. Things like tone of voice, choice of words, and
typeface all have an effect.

Why does it surprise people that the manner in which you communicate can
affect how likely people are to believe what you're saying?

~~~
JasperBall
That's exactly what the article says further down.

~~~
callum85
Not really. It says the findings are fascinating/interesting, and I'm saying
they are not.

------
cafebeen
Reminds me of the Higgs boson announcement, which was surprisingly delivered
in comic sans:

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/4/3136652/cern-scientists-
com...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/4/3136652/cern-scientists-comic-sans-
higgs-boson)

I suppose the context kept the font choice from detracting too much in that
case!

------
capex
That blinking eye took away whatever effect the article's font had on me.

~~~
marvy
I put up another window to block the eye so I could read in peace. I don't
what they were thinking.

------
10dpd
"Now, Morris is the first to admit that this wasn’t exactly a true scientific
experiment, but you know what? That’s okay!"

No its not ok because it means that the findings, however fascinating, can't
be accepted.

------
jabo
What if... this whole article is an experiment in itself in that it is
completely false, but has used its fonts and the blinking eye to convince us
otherwise.

------
memming
When I see documents nicely type set with LaTeX, I have a prior expectation
that it is more likely true.

~~~
onion2k
Presumably we believe people wouldn't invest time and energy going to great
lengths to present something that isn't true in a well-designed and complex
way. Which is stupid really, because the effort someone will put in is almost
always related to the reward they get out rather than anything to do with
truth - if presenting something false has a high return people will go to
great lengths to present it extremely well.

------
unexistance
I was just thinking somewhat the same thing, making my son familiar with mono-
spaced fonts, so when he found some source code, it'll be like home to him
when he grows up...

guess it's going to work, to some extent

p/s: he's just 4yo now

~~~
Stratoscope
That's really neat that you want your son to be familiar with monospaced fonts
so source code displayed that way will look normal and comfortable.
Screenplays too!

So I hope I won't be out of line with a friendly suggestion... :-)

Don't teach him that there is something special about monospaced fonts that
lets you write code - that code can _only_ be written in a monospaced font. I
honestly think that the majority of programmers believe this, but it just
isn't so.

I haven't written any of my code in a monospaced font in over ten years - and
the funny thing is you'd never be able to tell that from reading my code. It
reads the same and the formatting looks the same whether you view it in a
proportional or monospaced font.

I've run into many programmers who are shocked when they find out that I write
code in a proportional font. They ask, "How can you do that? How can it
possibly work?"

Rather than go into the details here of how it can possibly work - it's really
quite simple and becomes apparent once you try a proportional font - imagine
that one day your son asks, "Daddy, why do we have to code in monospaced
fonts? I like Trebuchet! [Or Comic Sans, or whatever.] Why can't I code in
that?"

Do you answer, "Don't be silly, of course you can't do that. We always program
in monospaced fonts. You couldn't possibly code in a proportional font, it
just doesn't work."

Or, "Well, that's a good question. I've always used monospaced fonts, but I
never really thought about it. Why don't you experiment and see how it works
out, maybe you can teach me something new!"

Don't misunderstand, these are just examples, I don't mean to put words in
your mouth or say what kind of conversation you and your son might have. But I
think most programmers today would give the first answer, and that makes me a
bit sad.

Whatever your own thoughts about fonts, it is definitely cool that you want to
open the doors for your son to be interested in programming!

~~~
kozak
..and then, by the time he grows up, elastic tabstops become commonplace and
people stop using monospaced fonts for code :)

------
pera
Yeah I think this is true: most people would probably (initially) trust a
paper using Computer Modern more than one using Times New Roman.

------
alexggordon
I think the takeaway from this is that people associate "odd" fonts with
different things (but rarely professionalism), which makes them scary to use
in a professional context. Similar to how most of us are "afraid" of wasps
because we've had previous bad experiences with them, most people have
experienced out of the normal fonts in the wild, but most often in a joke, or
on a bad internet site. This previous experience, like the wasp, is taken with
us subliminally to the next time we see the font.

Standard fonts exist because if you use them everywhere, users are forced to
evaluate the content, and not the font.

Speaking of bad experiences though, I tend to avoid Betteridge's[0] too.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

~~~
marvy
But this seems to be one of the few exceptions to that law. The headline was a
question, and the answer was yes. Well, almost, sorta, kinda.

~~~
jedmeyers
In today's issue: Does Betteridge's law of headlines have exceptions?

------
solt
Did anyone check what font the NYT website used at the time? I'd expect the
font most similar to that one to win the survey.

------
trombone8
Man, I just get angry with people this sloppy. How can you write:

"Now, Morris is the first to admit that this wasn’t exactly a true scientific
experiment, but you know what? That’s okay! Because the findings are still
fascinating."

without dying of embarrassment? It is equivalent to:

"Hey, this next bit might not be true but that doesn't matter because it's a
good story!"

Its just offensive to so blatantly mention the unreliability of the findings
and then go on to dismiss the notion of uncertainty entirely in the remaining
text. Why did he even put in that mention?!

~~~
Aeolun
Just because it's not a true scientific experiment, that does not necessarily
mean that it's uncertain.

That said, I'd rather people say this, than that they don't mention any
uncertainty at all.

~~~
trombone8
Simply saying "this is uncertain information" does not absolve the use of
"truth" and "prove" without qualifiers as the text does.

Except for that mention the text does not act like there are any uncertainty,
hence the mention is a simple and dishonest cover-your-ass.

------
the8472
Comic Sans and/or XKCD-style charts[1][2] certainly are useful if you want to
convey the back-of-the-envelope nature of your findings.

[1]
[https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/why_xkcd_style_graph...](https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/why_xkcd_style_graphs_are_important.html)
[2] [http://dan.iel.fm/xkcd/](http://dan.iel.fm/xkcd/)

------
im3w1l
Rather than any intrinsic property of the font, I'd ascribe it to the
associations we have to it. Has previous things we read in this font been
trustworthy?

~~~
anonymfus
Are there cross-cultural studies of this effect? If you are wrong, trustworthy
fonts will have the same set of properties in cultures with similar alphabets.
Pair of cultures which rate trustworthiness of fonts differently despite
sharing the same language and alphabet could prove you.

~~~
riffraff
I believe there is too much homogeneity among cultures using the same fonts
(i.e. latin alphabet) that there isn't going to be such a case.

For example, hand-writing-like fonts are used in comics both in US style,
european and south american stuff; newspapers and books have been printed with
serif fonts since about forever; international brands look the same; MS
Office/windows has provide everyone with the same fonts for decades.

------
compbio
Baskerville has gorgeous ampersands: [http://www.marsie.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/05/marsie-ampe...](http://www.marsie.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/05/marsie-ampersand.png)

------
claudio_alvarez
It is Comic Sans that can make us believe something is untrue.

------
ankitoberoi
I wrote a somewhat similar article about an year ago:
[http://www.adpushup.com/blog/how-typography-affects-
readers/](http://www.adpushup.com/blog/how-typography-affects-readers/)

Quoting from the article: An experiment conducted by Kevin Larson and Rosalind
Picard looked at how typography affects mood and performance of the readers.
It happened across two studies, where they took three kind of measurements:
Relative Subject Duration (RSD), Likert Scale and through a cognitive task
which was different for both studies.

There were twenty participants, half of them got the text with poor typography
and half got good typography.

In the first study, the participants were given twenty minutes to read the
passage, amid which (after 15 minutes) they were interrupted and asked to
estimate how long they had been reading for. After the RSD data was recorded,
they were asked to fill out the Likert preference questionnaire with 6
statements, where one of the statements was whether they found the text easy
to read.

Next, they were given a cognitive task, which for the first study was a Candle
problem.

The second study was very similar to the first one, except for the RSD data,
they were interrupted 17 minutes into reading, and the cognitive performance
task was changed to remote associates test.

Results \- Participants with good typography underestimated their time by 3
minutes 18 seconds in the first study and by 5 minutes and 21 seconds in the
second study. This shows that when a passage is well structured, the readers
are more engrossed in the text. \- With the Likert scale questionnaire in the
first study, the results were not reliable. But in the second study, some
scores were in favor of good typography. \- For the Candle problem, out of the
10 participants who were shown good typography, 4 successfully completed the
task, while 0 participants completed the task in the other group. \- In the
Remote associates task, the results were not statistically significant or
reliable with the good typography group succeeding on 52% of the task at an
average speed of 6395ms, and the poor typography group succeeding at 48% of
the task at an average speed of 6715ms.

Even though the result was not reliable enough in the second study, the good
typography group did perform better. This can be attributed to the fact that
they were in a better mood before starting the task. Hence, they were better
at problem solving.

------
kccqzy
It would be fascinating if they could release the anonymized raw data though.
I'm curious about the vague statement "people are much more likely to believe
something written in Baskerville than any of the other fonts." For example, I
want to know the sample size and the significance level at which the
conclusion is obtained.

------
agumonkey
"Quidquid latine dictum, altum videtur"

I'm heavily biased toward anything published as Latex PhD template instance.

------
handelaar
This is new -- a blog where you can't read below the fold by any known method.
Arrow keys? Nope. PageDn? Nope. Scroll wheel? Nope. Scroll bar? Disabled.

[Chrome 43, Win7]

------
sogen
There was a Letter of Note, some famous director talked about setting
documents in Georgia because it made them look more professional.

------
mc808
I tend to assume any blog about design/typography with article text in a font
larger than 15-20px is written by a clueless newbie.

------
nine_k
In short: quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur. Serious-looking fonts
impart more trust into content.

------
netheril96
I am mostly certain that I am less trusting of this website because of its
font choice.

------
saltyshake
[http://youtube.com/watch?v=VUawhjxLS2I](http://youtube.com/watch?v=VUawhjxLS2I)

------
2Pacalypse-
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

~~~
CodeWriter23
Well played. And hilarious.

