Showing people behind data: Does anthropomorphizing visualizations elicit more empathy for human rights data?

Jeremy Boy; Anshul Vikram Pandey; John Emerson; Margaret Satterthwaite; Oded Nov; Enrico Bertini

doi:10.1145/3025453.3025512

Showing people behind data: Does anthropomorphizing visualizations elicit more empathy for human rights data?

Jeremy Boy, Anshul Vikram Pandey, John Emerson, Margaret Satterthwaite, Oded Nov, Enrico Bertini

Technology Management and Innovation

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Abstract

We investigate the impact of using anthropomorphized data graphics over standard charts on viewers' empathy for, and prosocial behavior toward suffering populations, in the context of human rights narratives. We present a series of experiments conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk, in which we compare various forms of anthropomorphized data graphics - ranging from a single human figure that 'fills up' to show proportional data, to separated groups of individual human beings - with a standard chart baseline. Each experiment uses two carefully crafted human rights data-driven stories to present the graphics. Contrary to our expectations, we consistently find that anthropomorphized data graphics and standard charts have very similar effects on empathy and prosocial behavior.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	CHI 2017 - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Subtitle of host publication	Explore, Innovate, Inspire
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery
Pages	5462-5474
Number of pages	13
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450346559
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025512
State	Published - May 2 2017
Event	2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2017 - Denver, United States Duration: May 6 2017 → May 11 2017

Publication series

Name	Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
Volume	2017-May

Other

Other	2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2017
Country/Territory	United States
City	Denver
Period	5/6/17 → 5/11/17

Keywords

Anthropographics
Empathy
Human rights
Information visualization for the people
Prosocial behavior

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Software
Human-Computer Interaction
Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design

Access to Document

10.1145/3025453.3025512

Cite this

Boy, J., Pandey, A. V., Emerson, J., Satterthwaite, M., Nov, O., & Bertini, E. (2017). Showing people behind data: Does anthropomorphizing visualizations elicit more empathy for human rights data? In CHI 2017 - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Explore, Innovate, Inspire (pp. 5462-5474). (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings; Vol. 2017-May). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025512

Showing people behind data: Does anthropomorphizing visualizations elicit more empathy for human rights data? / Boy, Jeremy; Pandey, Anshul Vikram; Emerson, John et al.
CHI 2017 - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Explore, Innovate, Inspire. Association for Computing Machinery, 2017. p. 5462-5474 (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings; Vol. 2017-May).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Boy, J, Pandey, AV, Emerson, J, Satterthwaite, M, Nov, O & Bertini, E 2017, Showing people behind data: Does anthropomorphizing visualizations elicit more empathy for human rights data? in CHI 2017 - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Explore, Innovate, Inspire. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings, vol. 2017-May, Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 5462-5474, 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2017, Denver, United States, 5/6/17. https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025512

Boy J, Pandey AV, Emerson J, Satterthwaite M, Nov O, Bertini E. Showing people behind data: Does anthropomorphizing visualizations elicit more empathy for human rights data? In CHI 2017 - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Explore, Innovate, Inspire. Association for Computing Machinery. 2017. p. 5462-5474. (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings). doi: 10.1145/3025453.3025512

Boy, Jeremy ; Pandey, Anshul Vikram ; Emerson, John et al. / Showing people behind data : Does anthropomorphizing visualizations elicit more empathy for human rights data?. CHI 2017 - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Explore, Innovate, Inspire. Association for Computing Machinery, 2017. pp. 5462-5474 (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings).

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Showing people behind data: Does anthropomorphizing visualizations elicit more empathy for human rights data?

Abstract

Publication series

Other

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

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