Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Following the increasing use of graphs to communicate statistical information in social media and news platforms, the occurrence of poorly designed misleading graphs has also risen. Thus, previous research has identified common misleading visual features of such graphs. Our study extends this research by empirically comparing the deceptive impact of 14 distinct misleading graph types on viewers' understanding of the depicted data. We investigated the deceptive nature of these misleading graph types to identify those with the biggest potential to mislead viewers. Our findings indicate that misleading graphs significantly decreased viewers' accuracy in interpreting data. While certain misleading graphs (e.g., graphs with inverted y-axis or manipulated time intervals) significantly impeded viewers' accurate graph comprehension, other graphs (e.g., graphs using pictorial bars or graphs with compressed y-axis) had little misleading impact. By identifying misleading graphs that strongly affect viewers' understanding about depicted data, we suggest that these misleading graphs should be the focus of educational interventions.