Bad type = better analytical thinking

[gthompson]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

The July 2012 issue of Scientific American (Advances: How Critical Thinkers Lose Their Faith in God) points out that a hard to read font "...promotes analytic thinking by forcing volunteers to slow down and deliberate more carefully...". People in the study discussed in the article expressed less belief in God compared to those who read material in a "clear" or easy to read font. Maybe we have been doing this all wrong.

[Nick Shinn]

This is becoming a bit of a meme amongst the scientific set.
Eat your own dog food, I say.
Who will be the first to publish their research in 8pt Brush Script?
That should scare off the intelligent designers.

[R.]

Here is the Science paper the article in Scientific American summarises. It shows (but does not say) that the clear font was upright black Tahoma, the unclear one slanted gray Courier in a smaller point size.

[Dunwich Type]

This is becoming a bit of a meme amongst the scientific set.

More like among hack science journalists.

Anyway, the real problem here is that nobody has noticed that readers do better with engaging content than bland content. Typography doesn’t have to be bad to be engaging. And I suspect that good writing would solve the problem even more handily—as the success of J. K. Rowling and George R. R. Martin at getting young people to read long books shows us.

[oldnick]

James,

I suspect you're right. Just as it is a poor workman who blames his tools, it's a poor scientist who concludes that making a task more difficult somehow makes it more meaningful. If that were the case, why not print all of our school textbooks in Chinese? That ought to keep the little bastards engaged: make reading a Sisyphean task! Puh-leeze…

[William Berkson]

We've been through this before. Comprehension is going to be affected by visual readability of the text, interest of the reader, effort of the reader, quality of the writing, and time on task. As I believe those who did the study don't control for time on task and other variables, it is worthless to tell us about type.

[Mark Simonson]

...the success of J. K. Rowling and George R. R. Martin at getting young people to read long books...

I've known kindergarteners who read J. K. Rowling. In the case of George R. R. Martin, I hope you mean a bit older than that.

[jabez]

Prior research has shown that a difficult-to-read font promotes analytic thinking by forcing volunteers to slow down and deliberate more carefully about the meaning of what they are reading.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-critical-thinkers-l...
----

We can finally recognize the designers responsible for junk mail and ransom notes as the brilliant masterminds they truly are.

[quadibloc]

Look on the bright side.

This study, plus the other item which formed the title of the "Advances" column for the month, means that religious publications will pay more attention to having quality, easy-to-read typography! An employment opportunity!

[Nick Shinn]

I may mock reading science, but I do like the idea of “visual priming”, which is an important part of graphic design.

[Té Rowan]

@quadibloc – One would hope so, but this is after all the lot that wants us to believe that a tome on how something happened is a denial of it happening.

[dberlowgone]

"...a hard to read font "...promotes analytic thinking by forcing volunteers to slow down and deliberate more carefully...".

Are not most people with time to volunteer for studies attention challenged to begin with?

"People in the study discussed in the article expressed less belief in God compared to those who read material in a "clear" or easy to read font. "

It's news that God is a type designer?

"Maybe we have been doing this all wrong."

You don't believe what's good for most people is all right?

[Iranon]

Would those results hold outside a controlled environment, where a likely reaction is "annoying to read, didn't bother"?

The fetish for hard data prompts researchers to ask dumb questions and jump to the first conclusion that presents itself, because everything else is hard to test for.
It gets really annoying when the supposed way forward is making things better by making them worse, in a way backed by such evidence.

There are slightly less dumb questions about the effect of type on comprehension that could be asked. E.g.:
Will large and commanding capitals improve recollection of names and proper nouns in an unfamiliar subject?
Will they disturb the flow and hinder the understanding of underlying concepts?

I ought to look through my old schoolbooks some day and check whether the ones set in bright colours and sanitised sans serifs truly sucked compared to the legacy ones, or whether the aesthetics automatically made me think "dumbed down and uninteresting".

[quadibloc]

Incidentally, it has also occurred to me that there is no need for people to start using wretched typefaces for science textbooks. After all, such tomes usually feature a large number of equations, and these will slow down the flow of reading enough that even the most beautiful, legible, and readable typeface will not result in the absence of opportunity to pause and think analytically along the way.

[gthompson]

Once I had great difficulty reading a particular book. It was well designed, set nicely in Baskerville and it took me awhile to figure out what the problem was: fuzzy surface paper made the type very hard to read, so much so I gave up. We should get some grant money and follow up these various studies with our own and show the scientists up.

[hrant]

I think if you need to force people to read boring and/or poorly written content it probably makes sense to slow them down to deliberative reading with a low-readability font. But you can't do that for a long period - it's physically too tiring.

Content that a reader will enjoy is what separates the real text fonts from the pretenders, and it's where type designers can push the envelope.

hhp

[Nick Shinn]

I organized a beer-tasting at a party once.
The winning beer was a strong, sweet “amber” brew.
The kind of thing that tasted good to sip, but not what most people would drink by the pint.

[hrant]

Exactly, display beer.

hhp

[quadibloc]

If one wishes to promote analytical thinking, though, advocating the use of "ugly" typefaces won't get very far. People who produce printed materials, after all, are competing to get other people to read them in the first place, so they feel constrained to make them as attractive as possible.

Hence, we need some way of making reading more difficult that is an inherent feature of all reading materials, one that a specific publisher cannot escape from.

Unfortunately, as the essay at the beginning of The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy illustrates, there isn't really a practical way to write English using Chinese characters.

[ldavidson]

How about the header font here at Typophile? Attractive, yet difficult to read. Making such fonts in a variety of styles should be no hill for the climbers around here.

Let historical romance novels continue to be set in fonts that let the content be forgettable. But bring out the sharp tools for the works where it is important that the content be comprehended and remembered, not just consumed.

[dezcom]

Science is allowed an occasional whimsy ;-)

[oldnick]

@Nick Shinn

I organized a beer-tasting at a party once.
The winning beer was a strong, sweet “amber” brew.
The kind of thing that tasted good to sip, but not what most people would drink by the pint.

How very true. I once bought a six-pack of Samiclaus Brown—because that's the only purchase option offered—because it is one very stout brew. How strong? 24% ABV strong—about as strong as beer gets.

Unfortunately, I really couldn’t swallow more than a sip at a time, which kind of takes the enjoyment out of the process, so I ended up making half-and-halfs with a pleasant smooth ale. Well, half-and-half was better, but not ideal, so I found an acceptable balance at three-to-one. The net result was more mixer than the star of the show, and a net ABV of 7-8% or so…which I could achieved with Moretti Birra La Rossa, which tastes mighty nice right out of the bottle—if you happen to like seriously malty brews with a great finish and a bit of a kick, which I do—and costs about a third as much.

So, you live and learn. I just wish that it hadn't cost me twenty-five bucks for "the good stuff" plus the cost of the mixer—another twenty-five bucks or so—to learn that, yes, you actually can get too much of a good thing. As I recall, this guy named Aristotle figured that out a long time ago. Hey, Lozos: what's up with you Greek guys, anyhow? How come you always seem to have the right answers? Except when it comes to paying taxes…

[dezcom]

LOL!!! Greeks all study taxidermy by law ;-)

[dezcom]

BTW, Nick, Taxidermy, in ancient Greek, means "The Art of Telling the Tax Man to Go Stuff it"

[Té Rowan]

Don't forget Taxonomy: The science of telling which species of demon the tax 'man' is.