recent research

Trailing Kevin Lewis' trail of new research:

• Feeling powerful makes us more certain of - and less willing to doubt - our beliefs.
• A - perhaps - inethical persuasion technique: priming "trust."
• Are women innately more Bayesian than men? When playing the Danish lottery they are.
• Be warned American citizens: being in-action means being less objective. (As does any kind of threat perception.)
• The happier you are, the more irrelevant information you pick up.
• How much do we really prefer variety? Not so much when consumption is spaced out over time.
• Political polarization may be a good thing - if you're president.
• Making "wiser" citizens by de-personalizing policies.
• Looking at an American flag once (on a survey about politics) can make you more conservative - for up to eight months.
• And smelling gross things can make you dislike gays.
• Want to decrease racism? Have bigots mimic the actions of someone from another race. Or show them how people of that race vary.
• Having powerful friends makes us justify "the system." So does feeling the system is threatened. One way we do that is by believing the system is meritocratic.
• Make an honest citizen out of us: putting the compliance signature at the top of government forms cues us to lie less.
• Pheromones strike again: humans can smell anxiety.
• Getting citizens to the polls: sometimes it's as simple as invoking their identity as voters or giving them a little more information about the voting process.
• In case there was doubt, political campaigns do bring out the party faithful.
• One way to change someone's party affiliation: move them.
• Negative campaigns are de-mobilizing - but only for voters who've already decided to vote for the guy being slammed.
• Your social network will steer you to vote for the correct guy - but only if you don't have a partisan network.
• When it comes to how much citizens are politically active and feel their voice counts in local government, the size of their city matters.
• Social proof (the "everyone else is doing it" effect) may only work for campaign mobilization if the "everybody else" is a large enough number.
• Partisan news may not do much to increase or decrease voter turnout - but it does change when people decide to vote and how much they'll otherwise participate politically.
• Sometimes we choose just to choose.
• Google may not be making us dumber - but it is priming us to think of how to find information before thinking of the information itself.
• Fairness is desirable, yes? Not if you're a risk seeker.

feedback loop yourself into the person you want to be

Okay, this product may not turn me into the productive, well-toned and social person I want to be, but it's a start. Greengoose (still in production) uses sensors - on your toothbrush, water bottle and exercise gear - to track your healthy habits and then - and this is where the true genius is - turns them into points that you can use on Greengoose online games.

It's one of many products profiled at Wired, all of which use feedback loops to help you be that energy-conserving, financially responsible and fit person we all dream of being.

It's an article worth reading, but it misses one crucial point. Feedback certainly has an impact on moderating our behavior, but what makes Greengoose and the other products mentioned in the article so powerful is that the information they track enters the social sphere. In the case of Greengoose, that data gets turned into points that you can use to play games. For most of the other products, your information simply gets transmitted for others to see.

That's powerful stuff. We are social animals and our beliefs and behaviors are largely a product of those around us. Studies show that just by putting a picture of eyes on a computer screen, people are more likely to act ethically. So it's no wonder that making our daily habits public is the best bet for altering those habits.

recent research

More gems from Kevin Lewis:

• Red and blue states: not as different as the mean would suggest.
• In debate, we become less rational when faced with more extreme disagreement.
• Inter-group contact helps diminish prejudice - even for hard core bigots.
• More evidence that Americans continue to polarize.
• Designing questionnaires to get at respondent's true preferences.
• When it comes to media susceptibility, a little sophistication is a dangerous thing.
• Being in a diverse group makes us more open-minded, except when we've been cued to think about morality.
• Once we pick a political party, we stick with it.
• Citizens can be informed - if there's motivation to be so.
• Crowdsourcing: the bigger the crowd, the more active the crowd.
• Want to build trust? Use words not money.
• One counter-force to social hierarchies: generosity.
• Wise crowds get dumber when individuals are allowed to communicate.
• But groups are still smarter than individuals.
• If you want cohesion in a small group, make sure it has an odd number of members.
• Volunteer leadership makes leaders of us all.
• Experimental evidence that legitimacy makes it easier to govern.
• How to ward against "productivity losses in brainstorming, the common knowledge effect, group polarization, confirmation bias, overconfidence, and pressures toward uniformity" and make your intelligence group smarter. (One way may be to include dissenters.)
• How to solve global collective action problems? In very small groups.
• Confirming the obvious: you can make your social enterprise more effective by casting it as a protagonist.
• In larger societies we're more apt to punish people "altruistically" (for an affront they committed against another) than "spitefully" (for a personal affront). Not so in smaller societies.
• Does judicial activism polarize? Maybe not as much as some think.

Popping bubbles at MIT

Tyler Cowen thinks American innovation is in trouble.

At a TEDx talk two weeks ago he listed the causes of its demise, one being that American research and development is “tinkering with the parts not the whole.” There is “intensive innovation at the margins,” with experts refining the technological advances they know well. But few have the inclination or breadth to look across research fields and come up with entirely new technologies.

It’s a criticism that’s been leveled at university departments (with their academic fiefdoms) and, of course, which Eli sees happening more and more web-wide. As we nestle into our separate information enclaves, we’re missing the opportunities for insight and invention – whether in public policy, culture or innovation – that come from a broad perspective.

Worrisome. But MIT may have an antidote – at least when it comes to what’s ailing technological innovation.

As profiled by Ed Pilkington in the Guardian last month, MIT has long made a habit of pushing its faculty to cross academic boundaries – or disregard boundaries entirely – in order to explore ideas and inventions that may, at first glance, seem hair-brained or useless. That’s how composer and inventor Tod Machover could spend years tinkering with a “hyperinstrument” for Yo-Yo Ma, developing technologies that two of his students would eventually use to build Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

It’s more than just the gestalt of the place though. MIT actively encourages cross-discipline collaboration:

MIT delights in taking brilliant minds in vastly diverse disciplines and flinging them together. You can see that in its sparkling new David Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, which brings scientists, engineers and clinicians under one roof. Or in its Energy Initiative, which acts as a bridge for MIT’s combined firepower across all its five schools, channelling huge resources into the search for a solution to global warming.

With all those big brains bouncing off each other, it comes as little surprise then that MIT’s alumni have gone on to found tech companies that now account for 1/7th of US GDP – and half the ventures in Silicon Valley.

But why is MIT’s kind of innovation not happening among business behemoths, who surely have the money to fund MIT type R&D?

Daron Acemoglu, economist and MIT luminary himself, has an answer. And it’s pretty simple (although he has pages of econo-math to prove it): research only pays if you can convert it into marketable innovations today. But truly earth-shifting discoveries and innovations usually take years – or sometimes centuries – before they can be translated into marketable products. That’s why, as Cowen says, in business innovations only happen at the tips of the branches. Sprouting new technological branches simply doesn’t pay off – even with 20-year patents.

Luckily MIT isn’t dependent upon immediate profit; instead, government funding heavily subsidizes its seemingly zany, boxless and even pointless research. But we all benefit – when that freedom to explore and collaborate turns into new businesses and jobs down the road.

Publicly subsidized research, of course, has always been recognized as key to national economic growth (unless you’re a strict libertarian). MIT just happens to be a particularly strong example of how those subsidies can foster cross-discipline innovation. The market, as Acemoglu explains, isn’t providing the incentives for ground-breaking research and collaboration – so the government needs to step in.

But what about when about the market doesn’t provide incentives for all of us to explore ideas that are new, outside our usual interests, or challenging to our current perspectives? What should be the government’s role when the market instead draws us into filter bubbles because, well, selling the familiar and habitual is more lucrative.

In his book, Eli shies away from government imposed responses to the Filter Bubble. It’s a wise caution; you want to be really careful when it comes to imposing state rules on information flows. But could we invent and subsidize an internet MIT, a place where it pays to look beyond your perspective, a counter-force to our filter bubbles? I have no idea what that would look like, but if an online venture could push us to challenge our views, explore new ideas and even learn about what is distasteful to us – I’d give my tax dollars to subsidize that check.

re-posted from Thefilterbubble.com

recent research

More random pickings from Kevin Lewis' blog:

• For complex problems, go with your gut.
• Emotions are contagious - as seen through Facebook status updates.
• How to encourage organ donation? Cue regret. (And how to encourage moral behavior in general? Place a pair of eyes in view.)
• In car designs, we prefer the prototypical but with a little complexity on top. (But when it comes to architecture, we prefer the prototypical and less complex.)
• Poor impulse control may not always be a bad thing. (But those of us with poor impulse control, can train ourselves to resist temptation nonetheless.)
• We not only judge people more who are actively (vs. passively) immoral; we are also less apt to be actively (vs. passively) immoral.
• A comparison of Northern vs Southern public identities - as surmised from personal ads.
• Individualism is good for the economy.
• Montreal: how a creative urban petri dish gave birth to Cirque du Soleil.
• Want to know what tunes will be future hits: hook a few teens up to an MRI.
• The messenger is the most powerful message - at least when it comes to political videos on Youtube. (And Youtube watchers feel more politically effective than non-watchers, although they're more cynical about government.)
• A sense of humor is, no joke, good for dating.

recent research

More from Kevin Lewis' blog:

• Are their fundamental differences between tight and loose cultures? A study of 33 nations tries to tease them out.
• Irrational markets: 41% of auctioned gift-certificates on eBay are bid up beyond their face value.
• Reading about stupid people can make you temporarily stupid.
• Want to ace that test? Don't look at red.
• Getting money can be lethal.
• Terror makes you cling to your group - but only if you don't believe in the afterlife.

Genetically modified crowds

To anyone familiar with human stampedes, financial panics or professional soccer games, the “Wisdom of Crowds” may seem more like an oxymoron than a legitimate pursuit of study.

But as James Surowiecki so adeptly describes in his book of that name, crowds can be wise.

Under certain conditions. First, they must be diverse; homogeneous groups will be limited – or aggravated – by their shared narrow perspective. Next, groups must be set up so that individuals can think independently, thus avoiding the twin traps of groupthink and mis-information cascades. Finally, they have to have a way to aggregate their ideas, inputs and decisions.

Open source communities and (some) markets are good examples that meet all three conditions. Filter bubbles, which encourage homogeneity and cascades while eschewing communal aggregation, are not.

But if filter bubbles may make online communities stupid, could we make algorithms that make us collectively smarter?

We’re probably a long way off, but the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT is at least moving in the direction. Led by Thomas Malone, the center is looking more deeply at the “DNA” of smart groups; how the “what, who, why and how” of a group correlates to group intelligence.

In a study published last year, Malone and his colleagues discovered that average intelligence, for one, does not predict group intelligence. Other factors, such as group cohesion, satisfaction and motivation, are only moderately correlated. What does make a group smarter? Having a few people who are “socially sensitive;” that is, members who tend to be more open and receptive.

Malone and his crew are taking results like that and mapping them onto a “genome” of group intelligence. Workplaces and organizations are taking note, but so are news sites and online government initiatives interested in harnessing the intelligence of readers and constituents. Have an under-producing team or a comment thread full of flamers? Time for some group dynamic gene-splicing.

It might be too far a reach to translate MIT’s work to the the group dynamics of the internet as a whole – at least in the near future. But perhaps one day we’ll be building algorithms to maximize collective intelligence rather than just personal relevance.

cross-posted from TheFilterBubble