The main effects are often visualized with a main effects plot. The main effects plot simply plots the average for each factor level and, in this example, shows that the color distracter group exhibited a higher average completion time than the standard group. Main effect plots are not very informative with just one explanatory variable. However, in more complex data sets with several explanatory variables, main effect plots can be quite useful in comparing effect sizes across all the explanatory variables. Use statistical software to create a main effects plot.