Title
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.
Year
DOI
Venue
2011
10.1109/VAST.2011.6102445
Visual Analytics Science and Technology
Keywords
Field
DocType
data visualisation,user interfaces,cognitive psychology,containment metaphor,control locus,indentation metaphor,individual personality difference,personality trait,user needs,user preference,user speed,visual analytics design,visualization design,visualization style compatibility,visualization system
Big Five personality traits,Locus of control,Data visualization,Computer science,Visualization,Visual analytics,Human–computer interaction,User interface,Metaphor,Personality
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-4673-0015-5
12
0.77
References 
Authors
0
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Caroline Ziemkiewicz138624.47
R. Jordan Crouser218915.89
Ashley Rye Yauilla3191.32
Sara Su4755.31
William Ribarsky52057157.91
Remco Chang698364.96