Metacognitive and persuasive effects of infographics and plain language to communicate risk messages

Metacognitive experiences such as processing fluency suggest secondary judgments, “thoughts about thoughts,” can amplify, enforce, and otherwise affect message-concordant outcomes. Plain language and infographics should increase subjective experiences of ease, also known as processing fluency. This experiment tested whether the use of jargon and infographics within messages designed to explain fentanyl exposure and cybersecurity risks affected persuasive outcomes and processing fluency experiences. Results revealed that plain language messages increased susceptibility beliefs and lowered feelings of message exhaustion. Infographic use did not influence message perceptions on risk, credibility, or fatigue, and lowered feelings of processing fluency in this context. These results highlight the complexity of visual design elements, with implications on how processing fluency is affected by design.