Can Anthropographics Promote Prosociality?A Review and Large-Sample Study

Abstract

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Anthropographics in COVID-19 simulations

“…In a subsequent study looking at the extent to which physical and situated data visualizations about sexual harassment evoke compassion and prosocial behavior, Morais et al (2020a) similarly found that anthropographics show only weak or inconclusive effects. Liem et al (2020), studying visual data storytelling about immigration, did not find any greater effect in the visual data narrative that used anthropographics and was designed to evoke empathy.…”

“…Liem et al (2020), studying visual data storytelling about immigration, did not find any greater effect in the visual data narrative that used anthropographics and was designed to evoke empathy. Finally, Morais et al (2021) tested what they described as "information-rich" anthropographic data visualizations which showed data about individuals that is granular, realistic, specific, and authentic. In two experiments with larger sample sizes than in previous studies, information-rich visualizations about migrant deaths were compared to information-poor treatments that had aggregated data presented in bar chart format.…”

Towards Immersive Humanitarian Visualizations

“…There is a vast body of related work that can inform research in this area, and of which I have barely scratched the surface here. I have already mentioned related areas in visualization and human-computer interaction, such as research on anthropographics [8,57,58], narrative visualization and storytelling [41,68,72], visualization ethics [17], immersive analytics [47], situated visualizations [9, 92] 10 , and ambient displays and visualizations [66,80,93]. Other relevant research areas include persuasive technologies [31], visualizations for healthcare [74] and visualizations of public health data (e.g., [95]).…”

“…1 shows two examples. However, studies were subsequently conducted to test the intuitions behind common anthropographic design patterns, and they led to disappointing results -a recent paper identified a total of 13 experiments reported in five studies, to which it added two extra experiments [58]; Of the 15 experiments, most yielded inconclusive or negative results, and the few positive findings involved either very small effects or relied on weak statistical evidence requiring replications to be confirmed [58]. The paper concluded: It remains possible that there exist alternative anthropographic design strategies that have a large effect on measures of affect, decision making, or behavior.…”

“…There is presently no clear evidence that if designers employ current anthropographic design strategies, this will have a clear and observable impact on people's decisions and behavior. [58] Immersive visualizations offer a rich and promising space to explore alternative design strategies. Like many communicative visualizations, most anthropographics have been designed for the web.…”