Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13801

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Juni S, Gross JS.
Emotional and persuasive perception of fonts.
Percept Mot Skills 2008 Feb; 106:(1):35-42
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18459353

Abstract:

The aim of this study was to explore the latent affective and persuasive meaning attributed to text when appearing in two commonly used fonts. Two satirical readings were selected from the New York Times. These readings (one addressing government issues, the other education policy) were each printed in Times New Roman and Arial fonts of the same size and presented in randomized order to 102 university students, who ranked the readings on a number of adjective descriptors. Analysis showed that satirical readings in Times New Roman were perceived as more funny and angry than those in Arial, the combination of emotional perception which is congruent with the definition of satire. This apparent interaction of font type with emotional qualities of text has implications for marketing, advertising, and the persuasive literature.

Keywords:
Adolescent Adult Advertising as Topic Age Factors Aged Communication* Emotions* Female Form Perception* Humans Male Marketing Middle Aged Newspapers Persuasive Communication* Reading* Writing*