Did You Get The Gist Of It? Understanding How Visualization Impacts Decision-Making
This is an incremental position paper that aims to bridge gaps between visualization and psychology research for researchers in those fields.
The paper tackles the problem of visualization researchers' one-dimensional perspective on decision-making by advocating for a more nuanced understanding that integrates quantitative reasoning and gist-based intuition, based on insights from psychology and economics.
As visualization researchers evaluate the impact of visualization design on decision-making, they often hold a one-dimensional perspective on the cognitive processes behind making a decision. Several psychological and economical researchers have shown that to make decisions, people rely on quantitative reasoning as well as gist-based intuition -- two systems that operate in parallel. In this position paper, we discuss decision theories and provide suggestions to bridge the gap between the evaluation of decision-making in visualization and psychology research. The goal is to question the limits of our knowledge and to advocate for a more nuanced understanding of decision-making with visualization.