How Locus of Control Influences Compatibility with Visualization Style
Venue
Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST) (2011)
Publication Year
2011
Authors
Caroline Ziemkiewicz, R. Jordan Crouser, Sara L. Su, Ashley Rye Yauilla, William Ribarsky, Remco Chang
BibTeX
Abstract
Existing research suggests that individual personality differences are correlated
with a user’s speed and accuracy in solving problems with different types of
complex visualization systems. In this paper, we extend this research by isolating
factors in personality traits as well as in the visualizations that could have
contributed to the observed correlation. We focus on a personality trait known as
“locus of control,” which represents a person’s tendency to see themselves as
controlled by or in control of external events. To isolate variables of the
visualization design, we control extraneous factors such as color, interaction, and
labeling, and specifically focus on the overall layout style of the visualizations.
We conduct a user study with four visualizations that gradually shift from an
indentation metaphor to a containment metaphor and compare the participants’ speed,
accuracy, and preference with their locus of control. Our findings demonstrate that
there is indeed a correlation between the two: participants with an internal locus
of control perform more poorly with visualizations that employ a containment
metaphor, while those with an external locus of control perform well with such
visualizations. We discuss a possible explanation for this relationship based in
cognitive psychology and propose that these results can be used to better
understand how people use visualizations and how to adapt visual analytics design
to an individual user’s needs.
