{"ID":2863754,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24999","arxiv_id":"2509.24999","title":"Color, Gender, and Bias: Examining the Role of Stereotyped Colors in Visualization-Driven Pay Decisions","abstract":"We investigate the impact of stereotyped gender-color associations in a visualization-driven decision-making task. In the context of gender data visualization, the well-known \"pink for girls and blue for boys\" color assignment is associated with stereotypes that could bias readers and decision-makers. Understanding the effects of using stereotyped colors in visualizations for decision-making can help designers better choose colors in stereotype-prone contexts. We therefore explore the potential impact of stereotyped colors on compensation decision-making through two crowdsourced experiments. In these experiments, we evaluate how the association of color with gender (stereotyped vs non-stereotyped) affects the user's allocation decisions in the context of salary adjustments. Our results indicate that explicit expression of the color-gender associations, in the form of a legend on the data visualization, leads to in-group favoritism. However, in the absence of a legend, this in-group favoritism disappears, and a small effect of non-stereotyped colors is observed. A free copy of this paper with all supplemental materials is available at https://osf.io/d4q3v/?view_only=22b636d6f7bb4a7991d9576933b3aaad","short_abstract":"We investigate the impact of stereotyped gender-color associations in a visualization-driven decision-making task. In the context of gender data visualization, the well-known \"pink for girls and blue for boys\" color assignment is associated with stereotypes that could bias readers and decision-makers. Understanding the...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24999","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.24999v1","authors":"[\"Florent Cabric\",\"Margret Vilborg Bjarnadottir\",\"Petra Isenberg\"]","published":"2025-09-29T16:24:17Z","proceeding":"cs.HC","tasks":"[\"cs.HC\"]","methods":"[]","project_urls":"[\"https://osf.io/d4q3v/?view_only=22b636d6f7bb4a7991d9576933b3aaad\"]","has_code":false}