This article shows that animated display of time-varying data (e.g., stock or commodity prices) enhances risk judgments. We outline a process whereby animated display enhances the visual salience of transitions in a trajectory (i.e., successive changes in data values), which leads to transitions being utilized more to form cognitive inferences about risk. In turn, this leads to inflated risk judgments. The studies reported in this article provide converging evidence via eye-tracking (Study 1), serial mediation analyses (Studies 2 and 3), and experimental manipulations of the process factors: transition salience (graph type; Study 3) and utilization of transitions (global trend; Study 4 and investment goals; Study 5) and in the process, outline boundary conditions. We also demonstrate the effect of animated display upon consequential investment decisions and behavior. This paper adds to the literature on salience effects by disambiguating the role of inference-making in how salience of stimuli causes biases in judgments. Broader implications for visual information processing, data visualization, financial decision-making, and public policy are also discussed.

本文表明，时变数据（例如，股票或商品价格）的动画显示可以增强风险判断能力。我们概述了一个过程，其中动画显示可增强轨迹过渡的视觉显着性（即数据值的连续变化），从而导致过渡被更多地用于形成关于风险的认知推断。反过来，这会导致风险判断膨胀。本文报道的研究通过眼动追踪（研究1），系列中介分析（研究2和3）以及过程因素的实验操纵（过渡显着性（图类型；研究3）和过渡利用）提供了融合的证据。全球趋势；研究4和投资目标；研究5），并在此过程中概述边界条件。我们还演示了动画展示对相应的投资决策和行为的影响。通过消除推论在刺激显着性如何引起判断偏差方面的作用，本文为显着性效应增加了文献。还讨论了对视觉信息处理，数据可视化，财务决策和公共政策的更广泛影响。