How the persuasiveness of statistical evidence compared to personal testimonials depends on the recipient's distance from the message issue

Abstract

Statistical facts and personal testimonials (anecdotal evidence) are two common types of evidence used in health education, warning messages, and charitable appeals. While statistical evidence provides aggregated numerical information, messages that use anecdotal evidence typically describe an individual experience. Because research has not found a stable advantage of one type of evidence over the other, the literature has sought to identify moderators that predict when statistical or anecdotal evidence is more persuasive. This paper shows that the relative persuasiveness of statistical versus anecdotal evidence depends on the psychological distance between the message recipient and the message issue. An increase (decrease) in recipients' message-issue distance increases the relative persuasiveness of statistical (anecdotal) evidence. In addition, we show that message-issue distance determines how personally useful message recipients find statistical and anecdotal evidence. We also demonstrate that recipients' more abstract (concrete) thinking about the message issue prior to message exposure increases the persuasiveness of statistical (anecdotal) evidence. Based on our findings, we recommend that social marketers use statistical (anecdotal) evidence when the recipients' distance from the message issue is high (low) and the recipients' thinking about the message issue is abstract (concrete). Before deciding on the type of evidence, message designers may need to assess how abstract or concrete their target audience thinks about the message issue. The short measure used in Experiment 1b of this paper may be useful. It is adaptable to different message contexts and could easily be implemented in pretests to decide when to use statistical or anecdotal evidence.