Affective priming (positive and negative emotion) is shown to significantly influence accuracy in visual judgment tasks for several common chart types.

1. Lane Harrison, Drew Skau, Steven Franconeri, Aidong Lu, Remco Chang
Influencing Visual Judgment
through Affective Priming

2. Make Decisions
Reason
Perceive
D
A
T
A

3. Make Decisions
Reason
Perceive
D
A
T
A
Visualization is also used in more
serious contexts:

4. What do we know about affect?

5. Affect influences
creativity.
Affect alters how we decide
under uncertainty.
Affect modulates visual
perception.
(Lewis et al., 2011)
(Fredrickson, et al., 2005)
(Vuilleumier et al., 2007)

6. How does Emotion
impact graphical perception?

7. leverage well-
studied graphical
perception task
adapt well-studied
emotion-priming
techniques
Experiment
combining
emotion and
graphical
perception.
Let`s start with
what we know...

8. Position Angle
>
(Cleveland & McGill,1984)

9. Cleveland & McGill's Results
1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0
T1
T2
T3
T4
T5
Log Error
Crowdsourced Results
T1
T2
Useful for visualization design
guidelines; heavily replicated.
(image: Heer and Bostock, 2009)

10. 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0
T5
Log Error
Crowdsourced Results
1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0
T1
T2
T3
T4
T5
T6
T7
T8
T9
Log Error
(image: Heer and Bostock, 2009)
Validated AMT for graphical
perception studies.
Heer & Bostock, 2009

11. A B
100
0
A
B
100
0
A B
100
0
A
B
A
B
tree
A
B
A
B
1000
A
B
V1
V2
V3
V4
V5
V6
V7
V8
bar chart
(adjacent comparison)
bar chart
(non-adjacent comparison)
horizontal bar chart
(adjacent comparison)
stacked bar chart
(adjacent comparison)
pie chart
(ordered)
pie chart
(unordered)
bubble chart
treemap
Replicate Cleveland & McGill!
Again!

12. leverage well-
studied graphical
perception task
adapt well-studied
emotion-priming
techniques
Experiment
combining
emotion and
graphical
perception.

13. How do we induce Emotion?
Stories
Visual memory != verbal
memory
Commonly used in web-
based studies. (Goeritz., 2007)
(Shackman et al., 2006)
An excerpt...

14. No one could say for sure how long she would live, but
continued hospital care was clearly pointless. Nor could
she go home: she needed more attention than her
family could provide...
The problem was, she had no place to go. There was a
hospice facility near her house, but it would accept her
only if she would die within six days...
- Excerpt from Looking for a Place to Die,
Theresa Brown

15. How do we quantify Emotion?
How do we induce Emotion?
Stories
Visual memory != verbal
memory
Commonly used in web-
based studies. (Goeritz., 2007)
(Shackman et al., 2006)
(Lang et al., 2008, Lewis et al., 2011)
9-point
Self-Assessment
Manikin (SAM)

16. Pilot 2: how effective is the
priming?
Pilot 1: is the stimuli valid?
Full-study: all 8 chart types
Study components:

17. Pilot 1: Validate emotional
content of stories
Stories selected from the
New York Times
n = 40 on Mechanical Turk
SAM given only as post-test
Significant difference in emotion
(valence).

18. Pilot 2: Effectiveness of the
prime.
Purpose: does priming exposure
guarantee a performance impact?
n = 234 on Mechanical Turk
SAM given as pre- and post- test
Absolute values of SAM are
subjective, but change in SAM-
score indicates successful
priming*

19. Full-study: 8 chart types
Purpose: test whether affect influences
graphical perception.
Design:
- n = 963 on Mechanical Turk
- 1 random prime, 1 random chart
- 5 perception tasks per participant
- between subjects
Measures:
- performance: log-error
- subjective: 9-point SAM

20. Experiment procedure (Full study & Pilot 2)
Pre-Valence
Pre-Arousal
Post-Valence
Post-ArousalAccuracyVerification Question
Measure Emotion Random Priming
The patient was a fairly
young woman and she'd
had cancer for as long as
her youngest child had
been alive...
During this past year I've
had three instances of
car trouble: a blowout on
a freeway, a bunch of
blown fuses and an
out-of-gas situation...
A B
100
0
A
B
100
0
A B
100
0
A
B
A
B
tree
A
B
A
B
1000
A
B
Random Chart
V1
V2
V3
V4
V5
V6
V7
V8
Tasks
Which of the two (A
or B) is SMALLER?
What percentage is
the SMALLER of the
LARGER?
Measure Emotion

21. Full-study: 8 chart types
Cleanup:
- 299 removed for junk answers
- n = 664 total...
- n = 207 successfully primed
Analysis:
- log absolute errors
- 95% confidence-intervals
Two cases: by priming group (664)
and by SAM-change (207)...

22. Mean of all participants, regardless of final SAM
(n = 664):
0 1 2 3 4
Positively Primed
Negatively Primed
Means of All
Participants
No significant difference in error:
t(662) = 1.8318; p = .067

23. All participants, regardless of final SAM (n =
664):
A B
100
0
A
B
100
0
A B
100
0
A
B
A
B
tree
A
B
A
B
1000
A
B
V1
V2
V3
V4
V5
V6
V7
V8
0 1 2 3 4
Positively Primed
Negatively Primed

24. Means of primed participants (n = 207):
0 1 2 3 4
Positively Primed
Negatively Primed
Means of Primed
Participants
Significant difference in error:
t(205) = 3.1560; p = .0018

25. Primed participants (n = 207):
A B
100
0
A
B
100
0
A B
100
0
A
B
A
B
tree
A
B
A
B
1000
A
B
V1
V2
V3
V4
V5
V6
V7
V8
0 1 2 3 4
Positively Primed
Negatively Primed
>

26. Primed participants, (change in SAM):
A B
100
0
A
B
100
0
A B
100
0
A
B
A
B
tree
A
B
A
B
1000
A
B
V1
V2
V3
V4
V5
V6
V7
V8
0 1 2 3 4
Positively Primed
Negatively Primed

27. Expert Discussion:
Steven Franconeri, Northwestern
Positive moods can expand the
scope of the perceptual
spotlight of attention.
Encourage an observer to
process a larger spatial area of
the world in a single glance.
Negative or anxious moods can
constrict this spatial area.
(Eriksen & St. James, 1986)
(Gasper & Clore, 2002; Rowe et al., 2007)
(Eysenck & Calvo, 1992)
To summarize...

28. Emotion plays an
important role in
visualization.
Emotion influences graphical
perception accuracy.

29. A B
100
0
A
B
100
0
A B
100
0
A
B
A
B
tree
A
B
A
B
1000
A
B
V1
V2
V3
V4
V5
V6
V7
V8
0 1 2 3 4
Positively Primed
Negatively Primed
Ltharri1@uncc.edu @LaneHarrison codementum.org
Thanks!
co-authors:
Drew Skau, Steven
Franconeri, Aidong Lu,
Remco Chang
sponsors:
National Science
Foundation,
Visual.ly
colleagues:
Evan Peck, Alvitta Ottley
Dan Afergan, Jordan Crouser