A color-caused optical illusion on a statistical graph

Abstract

Despite the great increase in the use of color in statistical graphics, we know very little about how color affects people’s perception of the quantitative information on graphical displays. Perceptual psychologists have already demonstrated that color can cause optical illusions of various kinds. We ran a simple experiment to see if this can happen with a statistical map and found that an illusion did occur. © 1983 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.