A picture's worth a thousand words.
As Forbes previously reported, Dartmouth University's Brendan Nyhan and Georgia State's Jason Reifler ran a study looking into strongly held political convictions.
The researchers presented information that contradicted with the worldview of the study participants — hoping to see what it'd take to persuade them. Subjects didn't respond well to a written summary of evidence or attempts to assuage their self-esteem and make them feel comfortable.
However, all isn't lost. According to the study, charts were actually persuasive.
This won't always be easy — it's not like you'll always have a chart or a powerpoint on hand whenever you need to convince someone of something. However, this is an important to keep in mind. Cold facts and personal connections won't always do the trick — sometimes, a visual presentation is the edge that you need to sell your point.
You don't even have to get too fancy. As Stephen Meyer wrote for Forbes:
"All visuals used in the study were simple plain-vanilla graphs, so their power had nothing to do with fancy design or big production values. They were effective because they spoke to the brain in its native language."