Study finds political views, not race, shape reactions to mass shooting data

A new study from NYU Tandon School of Engineering suggests that when it comes to visualizations of mass shooting data, political ideology plays a more significant role in shaping emotional responses than racial identity.

The research, posted to the arXiv preprint server, challenges assumptions about how people interpret data related to gun violence.

The study involved 450 participants who were shown visualizations —in this case, bar charts—of mass shooting victim data highlighting different racial groups. Contrary to the researchers’ expectations, participants did not show stronger emotional responses when viewing data about victims of their own race.

“We anticipated seeing evidence of racial homophily, the tendency for people to identify more strongly with members of their own group,” said Poorna Talkad Sukumar, a postdoctoral associate in NYU Tandon’s Technology Management and Innovation Department and the lead author on the research which will be presented at VIS2024 next month. “But our findings suggest that the gravity of mass shootings as a topic may override such in-group preferences.”

Instead, the study found that political views were the strongest predictor of how participants reacted emotionally to the visualizations. Those with more liberal political leanings tended to have more negative emotional responses across all conditions.

Oded Nov, the NYU Tandon Morton L. Topfer Professor of Technology Management and a member of NYU Tandon’s Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), is another author of the paper. He said the findings highlight the complex interplay between personal beliefs and data interpretation. “This research underscores how pre-existing ideological frameworks can shape our emotional reactions to information, even when presented in a seemingly neutral, visual format.”

Maurizio Porfiri, Director of CUSP and an Institute Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, is also an author of the paper. He suggested that “studies like this are critical to helping us identify best practices to present data on firearm violence and sensitize the general public about firearm-related harms.”

The study also revealed that even relatively simple bar charts elicited strong negative emotions from participants, regardless of their race or the racial group highlighted in the data. This finding could have implications for how sensitive topics are visually presented in media and public policy discussions.

The researchers note that their study had limitations, including a relatively small sample size, which limits the detection of subtle effects. They call for further research exploring different types of societal issues and visualization designs to better understand how viewer characteristics interact with data presentation.

As debates around gun violence and racial disparities continue to occupy national attention, this study offers valuable insights into how Americans process related information. It suggests that bridging ideological divides may be more crucial than addressing racial differences when it comes to fostering a shared understanding of mass shooting data.

This study contributes to Porfiri, Nov, and colleagues’ ongoing data-based research related to U.S. gun prevalence and violence.