The role of numeric and statistical content on risk perception in infographics about road safety

Numbers saturate news coverage and health and risk messaging. But as our expertise in the creation of statistical information increases, the ability to use those statistics in decision making remains frustratingly inadequate. There has been a wealth of research related to how to train people to better use the numbers they interact with on a daily basis. Far less research, however, explores the appropriate way to use numbers in communication. Two experiments explored the role of numbers in risk communication infographics related to road safety while driving. Experiment 1 found that the presence of numbers influence risk perception, but whether those numbers reflect accurate statistics or random numbers does not change their influence. Experiment 2 found that removing all statistics entirely from infographics and replacing them with linguistic gist representations of the numbers (i.e. words like ‘some’, ‘many’, ‘none’) increased risk perception even though people found the infographics to be less informative than the ones containing numbers. The results suggest that the gist representations of the numbers in the context of the infographics are equivalent regardless of their value, such that the very presence of statistics influences judgment and risk perception but not their meaning. They also suggest that people do not always realize how they are using statistical information in their judgement and decision making process.