Polarizing Political Polls: How Visualization Design Choices Can Shape Public Opinion and Increase Political...

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Data Visualization Studies
• Political Science

Background:

• Data visualization is primarily studied for cognitive task enhancement.
• The impact of visualization design on social attitudes, values, and political polarization is under-researched.
• Framing choices in data presentation may interact with social cognitive biases.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how data visualization framing affects social conformity and political polarization.
• To examine if visualizing partisan divisions influences viewers' attitudes toward public policies.
• To understand the second-order impacts of data visualization on opinions and values.

Main Methods:

• Three experiments were conducted using crowdworkers.
• Participants viewed simulated polling data visualizations with varied framing (partisan vs. non-partisan).
• Attitudes toward public policies were measured before and after exposure to visualizations.

Main Results:

• Participant attitudes significantly shifted towards the group attitudes presented in the visualizations.
• Visualizations framing data by political party increased inter-party attitude divergence.
• Exposure to partisan data framing induced social conformity and amplified polarization.

Conclusions:

• Data visualizations can significantly influence individual attitudes and promote social conformity.
• Visualizing partisan data can exacerbate political polarization by increasing inter-party divisions.
• Careful consideration of visualization framing is crucial to mitigate unintended social and political consequences.