100 Things Every Presenter Needs to Know About People

62. People Respond More to Anecdotes than to Data

In my book Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click?, I explain that most mental processing occurs unconsciously. People are unaware of this unconscious processing, and it’s easy to give more weight to information that we’re consciously aware of. It’s easy to forget that information is coming in and being processed from many sources. It’s easy to forget that people are processing emotions too.

Let’s say you have to make a presentation to the department heads at work about your latest conversations with your customers. You interviewed 25 customers and surveyed another 100, and you have lots of important data to share. Your first thought might be to present a summary of the data in a numerical/statistical/data-driven ...