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Cognitive Biases in Visualizations pp 13–27Cite as

Studying Biases in Visualization Research: Framework and Methods

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Abstract

In this chapter, we propose and discuss a lightweight framework to help organize research questions that arise around biases in visualization and visual analysis. We contrast our framework against the cognitive bias codex by Buster Benson. The framework is inspired by Norman’s Human Action Cycle and classifies biases into three levels: perceptual biases, action biases, and social biases. For each of the levels of cognitive processing, we discuss examples of biases from the cognitive science literature and speculate how they might also be important to the area of visualization. In addition, we put forward a methodological discussion on how biases might be studied on all three levels, and which pitfalls and threats to validity exist. We hope that the framework will help spark new ideas and guide researchers that study the important topic of biases in visualization.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the reviewers. This work was partly funded by the German Research Council DFG excellence cluster “Integrative Production Technology in High Wage Countries”, and the FFG project 845898 (VALID).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Human-Computer Interaction Center, RWTH Aachen University, Campus Boulevard 57, 52074, Aachen, Germany

    André Calero Valdez & Martina Ziefle

  2. Jacobs University Bremen, Campus Ring 1, 28759, Bremen, Germany

    Michael Sedlmair

Authors
  1. André Calero Valdez
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  2. Martina Ziefle
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  3. Michael Sedlmair
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to André Calero Valdez .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Data Analysis and Visualisation Group, Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

    Geoffrey Ellis

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Calero Valdez, A., Ziefle, M., Sedlmair, M. (2018). Studying Biases in Visualization Research: Framework and Methods. In: Ellis, G. (eds) Cognitive Biases in Visualizations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95831-6_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95831-6_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-95830-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-95831-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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