Causal linkage between perceived visual salience and predictive decisions

Determine whether a causal relationship exists between viewers’ identification of visually salient data patterns in a visualization and their predictive decision about a future outcome (such as selecting the winning party in a subsequent year), and ascertain the direction of this causal relationship.

Background

Across the experiments, participants performed two key tasks: first indicating which pattern in a visualization (e.g., bar chart or table) they found most visually salient, and then predicting a future outcome based on the same data. Although task order was counterbalanced and consistent associations were observed between perceived salience and decisions, the authors note that this evidence does not establish causality between these two constructs.

Subsequent manipulations (e.g., annotation vs. highlighting) suggest that increasing visual salience can influence decisions, but the experiments were not designed to conclusively determine whether perceived salience causally drives predictive decisions, or whether decisions (or pre-existing preferences) influence which patterns are reported as salient. Clarifying this causal direction remains an explicitly stated open question.