Numbers beat narrative.
That’s what 21 experiments involving over 23,000 people found.
When comparing options, whether hiring, donating, or making policy decisions, people consistently preferred the option with the stronger numerical score, even if that meant downplaying equally important, but non-numeric, information.
For instance, participants were more likely to choose a summer intern whose course grade was shown as 93–97% than when it was presented as simply an A.
And more people chose to donate $1 to a charity when its accountability score was presented as a number, rather than as a bar graph.
In side-by-side comparisons with tradeoffs, people picked the option with the better quantified attribute even if the qualitative one was more meaningful.
So, why do numbers beat narrative?
Because they’re easier to compare.
The researchers call this "quantification fixation" – a bias that emerges because numbers make comparisons feel easier and more fluent.
This comparison fluency leads people to overweight quantified information in decisions, even when all options could be holistically evaluated.
What’s more, people who feel more comfortable with numbers are especially prone to this bias.
Why does this matter?
Because quantification changes perception.
If you assign a number to one attribute of a product, candidate, or option but leave another as a description, you'll tilt the scales.
This is yet another example of HOW you present information, regardless of what it is, affecting decisions.
Ref: Linda W. Chang, Erika Kirgios, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Katherine L. Milkman, “Does Counting Change What Counts? Quantification Fixation Biases Decision-Making,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, September 2024. https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.2400215121
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