How easy some­thing is to read and under­stand sig­nif­i­cantly affects how we per­ceive it in terms of its risk, beauty, dif­fi­culty, cred­i­bil­ity and truth­ful­ness. Fac­tors that influ­ence this cog­ni­tive flu­ency include typog­ra­phy (type­face choice, con­trast, etc.), ease of pro­nun­ci­a­tion, famil­iar­ity and how much the words rhyme.

The cover story of this month’s The Psy­chol­o­gist is an exten­sive study of this phe­nom­e­non, look­ing at how cog­ni­tive flu­ency affects our judge­ments and per­cep­tions.

This excerpt illus­trates the effect, whereby a set of phys­i­cal exer­cises designed to be incor­po­rated in your daily rou­tine were described (empha­sis mine):

When they were pre­sented in an easy-to-read print font (Arial), read­ers assumed that the exer­cise would take 8.2 min­utes to com­plete; but when they were pre­sented in a difficult-to-read print font, read­ers assumed it would take nearly twice as long, a full 15.1 min­utes. They also thought that the exer­cise would flow quite nat­u­rally when the font was easy to read, but feared that it would drag on when it was dif­fi­cult to read. Given these impres­sions, they were more will­ing to incor­po­rate the exer­cise into their daily rou­tine when it was pre­sented in an easy-to-read font. Quite clearly, peo­ple mis­read the dif­fi­culty of read­ing the exer­cise instruc­tions as indica­tive of the dif­fi­culty involved in doing the exer­cise. If we want peo­ple to adopt a new behav­iour, it is there­fore impor­tant that instruc­tions are not only seman­ti­cally clear and easy to fol­low, but also visu­ally easy to read – or else the behav­iour may seem unduly demand­ing.

Other find­ings from the var­i­ous stud­ies men­tioned in the article:

  • When a recipe is pre­sented in an ele­gant but difficult-to-read font, it is assumed that it requires more time and more skill than when pre­sented in an easy-to-read font. (The authors con­clude that restau­rants should describe dishes in difficult-to-read fonts. They do.)
  • Print fonts influ­ence whether peo­ple make deci­sions or defer them to a later time.
  • Food addi­tives with com­plex, difficult-to-pronounce names are per­ceived as more risky.
  • Amuse­ment park rides were classed as more dan­ger­ous if they had com­plex, difficult-to-pronounce names.
  • A sta­tis­ti­cally sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of stocks with easy-to-pronounce tick­ers sym­bols had higher yields than those with difficult-to-pronounce ticker symbols.