Science Confirms Pics Are Worth 1,000 Words

dinosaur milk
This image on the front page of National Geographic today piqued my interest.

The image above is in a rotating banner along the front page of National Geographic today.

To think that little dino babies could have nursed on mama dino’s little teats! I’m a sucker for ancient reptiles, and am myself mom to a creature of prehistoric persuasion. So I wanted to know, were dinosaurs and mammals not so different after all?

Spoiler alert: NatGeo’s article goes on to pretty convincingly debunk this newly proposed lizard lactation theory. Now instead of a lesson on dinosaurs, NatGeo taught me something about persuasion and images. After seeing that image and the overlaid text suggesting a radical discovery, I was primed to believe — practically persuaded already!

As you may have guessed, there’s science behind this phenomenon.

The reptile connection in Deaf Turtles, Persuasive Pictures is a total coincidence, I swear! What you should pay attention to is neuroscience marketer Roger Dooley’s observations about how photos give statements credibility:

  • In one study, images didn’t even have to be relevant to the statements being made in order to have this effect.
  • Add to this, text along with an image magnifies this effect even more.
  • Use images carefully and thoughtfully. A powerful image can draw attention — and that can be good or bad.

Mind-hack marketers can take advantage of this psychological disposition. Pictures really are worth a thousand words, and even more so when words accompany pictures. Kinda explains a lot about Internet memes, doesn’t it?

grumpy cat says no

Oh.

Virginia Nussey is the director of content marketing at MobileMonkey. Prior to joining this startup in 2018, Virginia was the operations and content manager at Bruce Clay Inc., having joined the company in 2008 as a writer and blogger.

See Virginia's author page for links to connect on social media.

Comments (12)
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12 Replies to “Science Confirms Pics Are Worth 1,000 Words”

Images and graphics makes article more intersting in reading . Search engine helps in getting any type of images whatever you want if you want to know more about search engines here’s an amazing blog

For a long time, people used to turn a blind eye to creatives or web graphics in content and other places on web. Hopefully, they would now understand the worth of visuals after this information.

So true Virginia, its amazing how potent one word can be when accompanied with a picture of an animal.. smart marketers can hijack everyday pictures of animals or nature and re-purpose them for specific initiatives..

Image make article live and interesting. User get involved in a story in the presence of images.
Nice article

I always refer images whenever writing blog or something about it. It not only capture the mind of people but also gives an idea what is correlating with it.

yes you are 100% right images with blogs Add to this, text along with an image magnifies this effect even more. i like your blogs and very helpful for me. thanks.

yes you are right. without images no one can read this big article so images are necessary in article. thanks for giving information.

So true Virginia, its amazing how potent one word can be when accompanied with a picture of an animal.. smart marketers can hijack everyday pictures of animals or nature and re-purpose them for specific initiatives..

Virginia, its same old saying in new words. Nice post!

I always advocate to use relevant pictures in the blog post, it makes user to understand the page content without even reading a single line.

I evokes emotions too.

No doubt. One can write a long and informative article but without images, everything just looks so dull.

Hi Virgina, I fully agree with you. Each time, when I blogged articles that don’t have images, my readers would comment and send me feedback to ask me to put more images.

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