Abstract:
Decision making under uncertainty can lead to irrational behaviour; such errors are often being referred to as cognitive biases. Related work in this area has tended to focus on the human’s analytic and sensemaking processes. This paper puts forward a novel perspective on this, proposing that some cognitive biases can also occur in the process of viewing visualisations. Consequently, this source of error may have a negative impact on decision making. This paper presents examples of situations where cognitive biases in visualisation can occur and outlines a future user study to investigate the anchoring and adjustment cognitive biases in visualisation.
keywords – Cognitive bias, visualisation, decision making, uncertainty