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Can a Font Make Us Believe Something Is True?
- handelaar 11y agoThis 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]
- trombone8 11y agoMan, 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 11y agoJust 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 11y agoSimply 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.
- taylorfausak 11y agoI liked the article, but I did not like the eye in the header blinking at me as I read it.
- cocoflunchy 11y agoSame 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 11y agoAlternatively, right click the element and choose inspect element, then add "display: none" to its css rules.
- vjeux 11y agoEven easier, right click, inspect element and hit the delete key :)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jhgg 11y agoAnother bookmarklet that does the same thing, but a bit more polished: javascript:(function(){var e=document.body.style.cursor;document.body.style.cursor="crosshair";var t=document.createElement("div");var n="border:1px solid #3280FF;background-color:rgba(50,128,255,0.5);position:absolute;z-index:2147483647;display:none;";var r="pointer-events:none;";var i="transition:width 60ms,height 60ms,left 60ms,top 60ms;";n+=r+"-webkit-"+r+"-moz-"+r;n+=i+"-webkit-"+i+"-moz-"+i;t.setAttribute("style",n);document.body.appendChild(t);var s=null;var o=function(e){var n=e.target;if(n!==s&&n.parentNode){var r=n.getBoundingClientRect();var i=document.documentElement;var o=document.body;var u=i.clientTop||o.clientTop||0;var a=i.clientLeft||o.clientLeft||0;var f=window.pageYOffset||i.scrollTop||o.scrollTop;var l=window.pageXOffset||i.scrollLeft||o.scrollLeft;var c=l-a+r.left-1;var h=f-u+r.top-1;t.style.display="block";t.style.left=c+"px";t.style.top=h+"px";t.style.width=r.width+"px";t.style.height=r.height+"px";s=n}};var u=function(n){document.body.style.cursor=e;if(n.target.parentNode)n.target.parentNode.removeChild(n.target);if(t.parentNode)t.parentNode.removeChild(t);window.removeEventListener("click",u,false);window.removeEventListener("mouseover",o,false);n.stopPropagation();n.preventDefault()};window.addEventListener("mouseover",o,false);window.addEventListener("click",u,false)})();void(0)
- 2Pacalypse- 11y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
- CodeWriter23 11y agoWell played. And hilarious.
- Semiapies 11y agoBlogspam for a 2012 article: http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2012/08/08/hear-all-ye-people-hearken-o-earth http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2012/08/08/hear-... Part 2: http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2012/08/09/hear-all-ye-people-hearken-o-earth-part-2/?_r=0&referrer= http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2012/08/09/hear-...
- logicallee 11y ago>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 11y agoIt 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 11y agoAnd, bafflingly, it doesn't even give examples of all the fonts.
- logicallee 11y agoAll right. Though I thought the mention was pretty explicit, and a good summary of the research there. I also thought it's a super-quick read, and I learned something.
- dmd 11y agoI 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 11y agoover 70 years of age or over 70 sample size?
- CodeWriter23 11y agoI'm gonna go with age because of the qualifier "in a care home"
- smorrow 11y agoMaybe 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 11y agoIndeed. 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.
- dmd 11y agoAge. N was about 20.
- solt 11y agoDid 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.
- solt 11y agoDid 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.
- saltyshake 11y agohttp://youtube.com/watch?v=VUawhjxLS2I http://youtube.com/watch?v=VUawhjxLS2I
- claudio_alvarez 11y agoIt is Comic Sans that can make us believe something is untrue.
- im3w1l 11y agoRather 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 11y agoAre 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 11y agoI 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.
- cafebeen 11y agoReminds me of the Higgs boson announcement, which was surprisingly delivered in comic sans: http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/4/3136652/cern-scientists-comic-sans-higgs-boson http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/4/3136652/cern-scientists-com... I suppose the context kept the font choice from detracting too much in that case!
- pera 11y agoYeah I think this is true: most people would probably (initially) trust a paper using Computer Modern more than one using Times New Roman.
- alexggordon 11y agoI 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
- compbio 11y agoBaskerville has gorgeous ampersands: http://www.marsie.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/marsie-ampersand.png http://www.marsie.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/marsie-ampe...
- nine_k 11y agoIn short: quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur. Serious-looking fonts impart more trust into content.
- memming 11y agoWhen I see documents nicely type set with LaTeX, I have a prior expectation that it is more likely true.
- onion2k 11y agoPresumably 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.
- callum85 11y ago“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 11y agoThat's exactly what the article says further down.
- callum85 11y agoNot really. It says the findings are fascinating/interesting, and I'm saying they are not.
- agumonkey 11y agoTypeface, clothes, voice tone, social status... the list goes on.
- thwarted 11y agoYeah, what's with these assumptive statements? 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. Experiment validity and the interestingness of the results are orthogonal. Considering the topic, I'd hypothesize that the less valid the experiment is, the more the experimenter is motivated to make the results look interesting.
- saulrh 11y agoIt's not surprising, but it is disturbing. Because this result holds independent of the content being communicated. A good presentation doesn't just affect your evaluation of opinions, ethical arguments, or he-said-she-said judgements. It affects your evaluation of proofs, engineering decisions, and concrete physical evidence. Decisions that are formal enough, in the mathematical sense of the word, that we should be relegating them to computers if at all possible. That's disturbing.
- jabo 11y agoWhat 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.
- capex 11y agoThat blinking eye took away whatever effect the article's font had on me.
- marvy 11y agoI put up another window to block the eye so I could read in peace. I don't what they were thinking.
- agumonkey 11y ago"Quidquid latine dictum, altum videtur" I'm heavily biased toward anything published as Latex PhD template instance.
- the8472 11y agoComic 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_graphs_are_important.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/why_xkcd_style_graph... [2] http://dan.iel.fm/xkcd/ http://dan.iel.fm/xkcd/
- unexistance 11y agoI 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 11y agoThat'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 11y ago..and then, by the time he grows up, elastic tabstops become commonplace and people stop using monospaced fonts for code :)
- kccqzy 11y agoIt 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.
- 10dpd 11y ago"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.
- analog31 11y agoMore 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."
- ankitoberoi 11y agoI 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.
- netheril96 11y agoI am mostly certain that I am less trusting of this website because of its font choice.
- mc808 11y agoI tend to assume any blog about design/typography with article text in a font larger than 15-20px is written by a clueless newbie.
- sogen 11y agoThere was a Letter of Note, some famous director talked about setting documents in Georgia because it made them look more professional.