Too many colors on a chart is bad, but why?

The following chart is bad, but how so?

The chart is annoying because of the misuse of colors.

What is the purpose of the multiple colors used in this chart? It's not encoding any data. Colors are used here to differentiate one bar from its two neighbors. Or perhaps to make the chart more "appealing".

The reason why the coloring scheme backfires is that readers may look for meaning in the colors. What's common between Iceland, United States and Germany for them to be assigned green? What about Japan, New Zealand, Spain and France, all of which shown yellow?

The readers' instinct is driven by a set of unspoken rules that govern the production of data visualization. Specifically, the rule here is: color differences reflect data differences. When such a rule is violated, the reader is misled and confused.

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For more about this rule, other rules related to making bar charts, and other other rules for making data graphics, please read my Long Read article, here.