If someone were to ask you whether our brains find it easier to understand text or images, you'd probably have a hunch that visual information is simpler and more pleasing to understand. As kids, we like reading picture books because they don't have those pesky words we don't yet know the meaning of. But we understand the illustrations — there's a universal language to drawings and pictures.
As we grow up, that tendency doesn't go away. Graphic novels might be our next favorites compared to books, even when they have over a thousand pages. Some people even prefer movies or TV over books because they can see the events unfold on the screen without having to imagine them.
There’s something about visual information that’s just easier for our brains to process, it seems. And there is truth to that, as scientists at MIT have found that it takes 13 milliseconds for us to process an image. Research from the University of Minnesota confirms this: one study found that we process visual stimuli 60,000 times faster than written text.
This is especially important in educating and learning. Who doesn't want to learn more cool stuff about our planet, but do so in a way that is fun, quick, and enjoyable? Sure, some people like reading books (some even love encyclopedias!), but presenting information in a succinct, visually pleasing manner makes it easier for us to understand difficult concepts.
Numbers and words matter in scientific breakthroughs, but the general public might struggle to understand complex concepts or findings. That's where graphs and charts come in: they make it easier for us to understand complex concepts, present statistics in simple, visually pleasing ways, and fire our brain synapses, creating new neural pathways.
In 1982, researchers from Cornell University found that people even trust visually pleasing information more than plain text. According to their study, 68% will believe information is true when it's presented in pure words and numbers. However, 97% will trust the claim when it's in a simple graph.
Pictures trump text even when it comes to us following instructions. According to Cornell University researchers, people are 323% more likely to execute directions betters when there are illustrations accompanying text instead of only text. Think about it: even some road signs in the U.S. have text and illustrations together, and that's not a coincidence.
When we see visual information, we're more likely to remember it than when we read it. A recent 2025 study examinedwhether people memorize graphs, texts, and tables differently. The researchers found that students best remembered information after 2 hours when it was presented in a graph. That's why when we see a picture of a historical event, it might stick in our memory far better than just reading a long paragraph about it.
Which one of these cool graphs is your favorite, Pandas? Tell us all about the new things you've learned from these charts in the comments! And if you're still in a learning mood, check out these cool maps that are as funny as they are educational and some surprising, random facts you didn't know you needed!
