“I’ll believe it when I see it,” is a hackneyed idiom, but it sticks because it happens to be mostly true.
It’s one of the reasons why data visualization is emerging as a powerful information force in the crowded, intensely contested world of social media. It’s why, during last year’s State of the Union, the president live-tweeted charts to illustrate the points he was making in his speech. It’s why Ezra Klein publishes stories that deign to suggest they can explain something as vast as the Roman empire with a few dozen maps.
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The user’s attitude matters. Research from Ansul Pandey and colleagues at New York University indicates that the persuasive power of dataviz may not be perfectly universal. The success of a visualization seems to be dependent on the initial attitude of the person assessing it. When participants in their study didn’t have strong opinions about the message being conveyed, visuals persuaded effectively. But they were less effective when participants held strong opinions in opposition to the message being conveyed.
