How locus of control influences compatibility with visualization style

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.

Towards Adaptive Information Visualization: On the Influence of User Characteristics

“…Even more recently, there has been a lot of interest in individual differences such as personality traits. In particular, Locus of control has been shown to impact performance across different visualizations relating to the degree to which users have internal and external control (see [15] and [25]). Other cognitive traits too have also been shown to have a strong influence on users' performance.…”

“…We believe this may be attributed to the fact that existing visualizations are designed mostly around the target data set and associated task model, with little consideration for user differences. Both long term user characteristics (e.g., cognitive abilities and expertise) and short term factors (e.g., cognitive load and attention) have often been overlooked in the design of information visualizations, despite studies linking individual differences to visualization efficacy for search and navigation tasks [1,8], for information seeking tasks [7,25], as well as anecdotal evidence of diverse personal visualization preferences [3]. Our long term goal is to explore the possibilities of user-centered visualizations, which understand that different users have different visualization needs and abilities, and which can adapt to these differences.…”

Understanding Visualization by Understanding Individual Users

“…1. The four visualizations used in our study on locus of control [19]. These views were designed to vary systematically from a more list-like metaphor to a container-based metaphor.…”

“…Building on Green et al's work, we have conducted studies to identify visual elements that appear to be stronger classifiers of users [19]. Our goal was to identify the specific design factors that were responsible for the reported results.…”

“…This proved a challenge when we designed our study on locus of control [19]. Much previous research has aimed to find individual differences in the use of a single visualization system, or in one or more real-world systems that differ from one another in many respects.…”