Emotion vs. Reason: Should You Place Your Text Above or Below the Image?

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How do you address your target group? With a rational and informative message, or do you choose an emotional cry that evokes the right feeling? Ratio and emotion are two separate concepts within marketing communication, both offer persuasiveness in their own way. Depending on what you choose, it is best to place the text above or below the photo, as shown by recent research by Cian, Krishna and Schwarz (2015).


A conceptual metaphor
Rationality and emotionality are both enormous concepts, it is almost impossible to capture them in an article. Explaining how we deal with this from our brain and judge it is much easier. As a result of centuries of interpretations of reason and emotion, an important conceptual metaphor has emerged. We associate reason with our head, while we associate emotion with our heart. Rationality and emotionality are abstract concepts, while our head and heart are much more concrete and therefore easier to understand.


Already in the writings of Shakespeare and, further back, Plato, characters point to their heads when making rational choices and, for example, hold their hands over their hearts when they are emotionally affected. It is something that we also see in more recent stories such as The Wizard of Oz, where Tin Woodman needs a heart belarus telegram number list because he does not experience emotions and Scarecrow needs a head because he lacks intelligence. In everyday life, we talk about 'falling into emotions' and 'high-level' conversations when we talk about them more rationally.

These examples lead us to associate reason with a high position and to hold emotion in a lower position. As a conceptual metaphor, this ensures that it works through to other psychological stimuli, without there actually having to be a head or a heart.

Ratio and emotion in marketing
From a psychological perspective, it is important to ensure a good 'fit' between what you present in marketing expressions and the way your brain would expect or like it. This psychological 'fit' applies to the choice of round or exact prices and to many other design choices. It ensures that our brain experiences what we see as more pleasant (less disruptive). The more pleasant we experience the marketing expression, the easier it is for us to make a positive association with it. In consumer psychology, this is called Perceptual Fluency or Processing Fluency .

If we know that we associate ratio with a high position (the head) and emotion with a lower one (the heart), it is therefore important to use this in marketing expressions in this way. You can take this into account in the design of a site, when you compose a newsletter or when you fill a bus shelter with a striking message that must convince passers-by.

Science trumps music
In their research, Cian, Krishna and Schwarz (2015) conduct experiments, among other things, for the ideal place for different elements on a website. They investigate, independently of each other, the ideal place for music and that for a scientific section. 47 participants were first shown a screen with only a site section for music or for science. Then a white screen was shown and they were asked to indicate where they would prefer to place the section they had seen.

Without further instruction, participants who had to place the music section did so significantly lower than participants who had to place the science section. This shows that we experience reason (science) as natural in a higher position in the image, while we experience emotion (music) as natural in a lower position.