What has a stronger impact on people's behavior: a story or a statistic? If emotional story and cool hard fact meet eye to eye, which will win?
I teach storytelling. So I was pleased when I read an article about a study conducted by Deborah Small, George Lowenstein and Paul Slovic on the persuasive power of a personal story vs. a statistic. And it didn't come as a surprise that the story won. But first, I had to find the original research paper, because I like my personal, emotional, convincing stories to be based upon cool hard fact. There are just too many stories that turn out to be fabrications. Fortunately, the research paper is real.
As in all psychological studies university students participated in the experiment under the pretext of another experiment. They would receive 5 dollars after completion of the fake experiment. The envelope containing the 5 dollars also contained a plight for help: people could make a donation out of the 5 dollars.
The victim was either statistical – average donation $1.14:
- Food shortages in Malawi are affecting more than 3 million children.
- In Zambia, severe rainfall deficits have resulted in a 42 percent drop in maize productionfrom 2000. As a result, an estimated 3 million Zambians face hunger.
- Four million Angolans — one third of the population — have been forced to flee theirhomes.
- More than 11 million people in Ethiopia need immediate food assistance.
Or identifiable – average donation $2.38:
- Any money that you donate will go to Rokia, a 7-year-old girl from Mali, Africa. Rokia is desperately poor, and faces a threat of severe hunger or even starvation. Her life will be changed for the better as a result of your financial gift. With your support, and the support of other caring sponsors, Save the Children will work with Rokia’s family and other members of the community to help feed her, provide her with education, as well as basic medical care and hygiene education.
- Rokia
Story beats statistics by more than a factor 2. The explanation could be that the facts make your donation feel insignificant while the story gives you the feeling that you can make a difference. As mother Teresa once said and the authors of the study quote:
"If I look at the mass I will never act. If I look at the one, I will."
Story AND Statistics
But the research continues. So story beats statistics, nothing unexpected there. But what if we include both story and statistics? An appeal to logic and emotion should be stronger than an appeal to either of them, shouldn't it?
Apparently not. The average donation when story and statistics were combined was $1.43. So the conclusion seems to be that if you want people to take action, you better leave the statistics out all together. Maybe include a link for the few people who are interested, but the majority won't be bothered.
Good news for me as a storyteller, bad news for me as a human being. But there is hope. This single piece of evidence is (and should be) quite narrow. Story vs. statistics vs. both are only investigated in the context of the (identifiable) victim. I can imagine that in other cases a combination of both could be stronger. As always, more research is needed.
In the meantime, there are two lessons to be learned from this research:
- When presenting, choose the story over the dry facts. If time is short, consider dropping the facts altogether, or move them to a handout or URL;
- When listening to a presentation, double-check the speaker's stories. Apparently we don't need facts to believe in things.
author: Peter Zinn
