Do We Consider Visually Attractive Social Media Posts More Credible?

While scrolling through social media how many times have you found yourself clicking on posts that contain attractive visuals? It is a fairly common occurrence and has to do with how we process visual information.

In online spaces, where the amount of information presented can be overwhelming users often use heuristics, or shortcuts, to conserve cognitive resources. They tend to fancy content that is presented visually and is packaged well. Research tells us that initial impressions of the credibility of websites are formed in less than 50 milliseconds. These instant evaluations happen on a visceral level and are most influenced by the overall visual appeal of content.

Moreover, through existing research, we know that information presented visually is perceived as more credible than when presented in the form of text. The reason is the true-to-life quality of visuals, also known as indexicality. In other words, images directly depict reality. Text, on the other hand, relies on syntax, which requires an additional layer of processing.

We, however, have little knowledge of which specific features, or characteristics, of visuals make them more or less credible in the eyes of online audiences. Also, little is known about how different visual formats impact audiences’ credibility evaluations, in comparison with textual information.

The importance and relevance of investigating these questions becomes evident considering that most of the information we consume online now is visual. The proliferation of ‘deepfakes’ further raises questions over the credibility of visuals. Online audiences, especially those belonging to certain demographics, are more susceptible to misinformation that is more likely to be spread through visuals.

Our research team set out to investigate this timely and relevant topic, which not only provides useful insights for the research community but has broader implications for social media platforms and online users.

Through an online experiment involving a representative sample of 1200 participants in the U.S., we tested how two visual features—aesthetic appeal and production quality—influence the perceived credibility of social media posts containing visuals. These two features were specifically chosen because, based on prior research, both can play an important role in how we evaluate the credibility of visual content.

By manipulating the aesthetic appeal and production quality of real-world visual social media posts, taken from Twitter and Instagram, we tested whether a change in these features (high versus low) produced significant differences in credibility ratings.

Aesthetic appeal was manipulated by adjusting visual attributes like color and other design principles that contribute towards the aesthetics of a visual such as symmetry, balance and harmony. Production quality was manipulated by adjusting the blurriness of visuals. Additionally, we compared credibility ratings of three different visual formats—photos, infographics, and data visualizations—with posts containing text alone.

High Aesthetic Appeal Translates To Greater Credibility

One of the main findings of our research was that social media posts with high aesthetic appeal were rated as more credible than those with low aesthetic appeal. This applied to infographics and data visualizations, but not to photos.

In order to better understand what causes aesthetically appealing visuals to be more credible, we tested processing fluency as a mechanism. Processing fluency is the subjective experience of how easy something is to perceive or understand.

Our results proved that the aesthetically appealing posts were in fact easier to process, and this contributed to their higher credibility ratings by respondents.

Production Quality Is Not Such A Big Factor

Another notable finding was that the production quality of visuals did not seem to influence respondents’ credibility perceptions. This was found across the board for all three visual formats.

One plausible explanation of this is that social media is inundated with low quality visuals and users are so used to seeing them that they do not necessarily equate low production quality with less credible content.

Not All Visual Formats Are Created Equal

Our results also revealed that photos and infographics are perceived as more credible than text, while data visualizations are not. This is an interesting finding considering that most prior research has focused on photos due to which little is known about other formats.

A plausible explanation for this is that both photos and infographics present information in a relatively easy-to-understand manner while data visualizations often contain dense information and statistical findings that require more cognitive resources to understand. Further analyses confirmed this explanation as participants reported lower processing fluency when evaluating data visualizations compared to text-only posts.

Overall, these findings do confirm that visuals are generally considered to be more credible than text but with a caveat—only when information is presented in a manner that is easy for audiences to process.

What Does It Mean in Practice?

Our results make it clear that visuals that are more aesthetically pleasing carry a credibility premium. This suggests that more time and effort should be spent by individuals and organizations in beautifying social media posts in order to positively influence audience’s perceptions and to maximize their reach.

However, this can be a double-edged sword as malicious actors can also spread harmful misinformation by presenting it in an aesthetically appealing manner. Hence, caution is advised when coming across such polished content. These findings, hence, also highlight the need for media literacy initiatives so that audiences can better discern visual content.

Additionally, merely including visuals in online posts is not sufficient to enhance their credibility. Special care should be taken when sharing data visualizations as dense content can require greater effort to process, which can backfire and lead to negative evaluations. It might just be better to share such information in the form of text in certain cases.

To conclude, findings from this research enhance our understanding of what features of visuals matter more for online audiences when evaluating the credibility of social media posts, and provide an explanation of why audiences make these evaluations. Our study adds to an under-researched but growing body of research on visuals. We hope that this research paves the way for more research in this direction, further dissecting how visuals are evaluated.

The full study, Visual Matters: Connecting Aesthetic Appeal and Production Quality of Photos, Infographics and Data Visualizations to Credibility of Social Media Posts, is available as a preprint on arXiv (https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.26309).