Shared Responsibilities for Climate Change Mitigation

The dangers of climate change pose a threat to all of humankind and to ecosystems all over the world. Does this mean that all humans need to equally shoulder the responsibility of mitigating climate change and its effects? The concept of CBDR (common but differentiated responsibilities) is routinely discussed at international negotiations about climate change mitigation. The underlying principle of CBDR in the context of climate change is that highly developed countries have historically contributed far more to climate change and therefore have a greater responsibility to reduce their carbon footprint than less developed countries. The per capita rate of vehicles in the United States is approximately 90 cars per 100 people, whereas the rate in India is 5 cars per 100 people. The total per capita carbon footprint includes a plethora of factors such as carbon emissions derived from industry, air travel and electricity consumption of individual households. As of 2015, the per capita carbon footprint in the United States is ten times higher than that of India, but the discrepancy in the historical per capita carbon footprint is even much greater.

CBDR recognizes that while mitigating carbon emissions in the future is a shared responsibility for all countries, highly developed countries which have contributed substantially to global carbon emissions and climate change for more than a century have a greater responsibility to rein in carbon emissions going forward than less developed countries. However, the idea of “differentiated” responsibilities has emerged as a rather contentious issue. Some representatives of developed countries do not embrace the idea of asking their populations to steeply curb the usage of carbon fuels and achieve strict carbon emission goals, whereas people living in less developed countries face fewer restrictions merely because they are “late developers”. On the other hand, representatives of less developed countries may reject universal standards on carbon emissions which ignore their historical carbon frugality and instead perceive these standards as attempts to curtail their industrial and economic development.

Are citizens of industrialized countries willing to recognize their privileged status and thus contribute more towards climate change mitigation? A team of researchers lead by Reuben Kline at Stony Brook University recently designed a behavioral study published in the journal Nature Human Behavior with volunteer college students from the United States and China to address this question. The students participated in a version of an “economic game” to ascertain how economic advantage would affect their choices. The study consisted of two phases. In the initial “Economic Development Game”, participants were divided into groups of six players and each participant could remove either $0, $1, $2, $3 or $4 per round from a shared pool of money ($180) belonging to the group. There were a total of 10 rounds so the maximum one individual could extract during the 10 rounds was $40. The clever twist in the experimental design was that half the participants were not allowed to extract any money during the first five rounds, so that the total they could have extracted was only $20. The second group thus emulated “late developers” in terms of industrialization and economic growth which merely watched as “early developers” accumulated wealth during the first five rounds.

The second phase of the experiment consisted of the “Climate Game” in which all the participants of a group were asked to return money into the common pool (“climate account”). The amount of money that had to be replenished in each group was 53% of what the group had removed from the common pool of $180 during the “Economic Development Game”. For example, if the combined sum of money removed by all six players in a group, was $100, than the group as a whole had to return $53 during the “Climate Game”. If the group did not meet the 53% target, the group risked a “climate catastrophe” in which all players of a group would lose their earnings. The probability of a catastrophic loss depended on the amount of money extracted during the “Economic Development Game”. If, for example, players in a group depleted $150 during Phase 1 and did not meet the threshold of returning $80 (53% of $150) during Phase 2, there was a 92% chance of a “climate catastrophe” in which all players of a group would lose all earnings. This discouraged greed by individual players and instead encouraged judicious extraction of funds during Phase 1 as well as active replenishment during Phase 2 to meet the 53% target.

The fundamental goal of the study was to understand how “early developers” would act because they had additional time to accumulate wealth during the first five rounds of Phase 1 and whether this advantage would affect their willingness to donate funds into the climate account during Phase 2. The results were quite remarkable and give reasons for hope in regards to how recognizing advantage affects social behavior. “Early developers” initially accumulated funds but then chose to extract less money during the later rounds once the “late developers” entered the game. Furthermore, early developers who had accumulated more funds were also more willing to donate money in order to replenish the “climate account” and help stave off the “climate catastrophe”.

Importantly, these experiments were performed in the United States and China, with similar results in both student populations. Interestingly, a representative quote by a “late developer” participant also explains why “late developers”  had lower rates of donations in Phase 2: “I decided not to contribute any because I felt that the individuals who were able to [appropriate] more money in the first round (early developers) should contribute more because I started with a disadvantage.”

The researchers interpret their data in the context of climate change mitigation behavior and suggest that recognizing one’s privileged status does indeed motivate individuals to greater sacrifice for the common good. The strengths of the study are the elegant design of the two-phase study, the replication of findings in two different countries as well as the inclusion of control groups in which all players were given equal opportunity to extract funds (without subdividing groups into “early” and “late developers”). Reuben Kline and his colleagues recognize the limitations of a highly stylized economic game experiment in a laboratory experiment using young educated college students to infer real world acceptance of carbon frugality by broader groups of citizens and political leaders in developed countries.

However, there is one fundamental issue which is not addressed in the context of this study. The “early” and “late developers” represented highly developed and less developed countries. However, the two countries they chose – United States and China – are marred by a tremendous amount of socio-economic inequality. Fifteen percent of Americans live in poverty even though the United States are often touted as the wealthiest country in the world.  CBDR and the results of the experiment detailed above are predicated on the idea that members of highly developed groups recognize themselves as being advantaged. But if there is such a discrepancy between rich and poor in a highly developed country, how likely is it that socio-economically disadvantaged members of society in a highly developed country will accept their status being labeled as advantaged? Populist political leaders in developed countries appeal to voters who are struggling to pay their bills, and their voters often perceive themselves as marginalized victims. Their income and quality of life may be far higher than that of their counterparts in less developed countries, but it is not clear that they would recognize this as an advantage in the same sense that the “early developer” college students recognized it in the experiment.

The research study by Kline and colleagues indeed provides reason for hope when it comes to climate mitigation behavior as well as perhaps other forms of prosocial behavior. It suggests that recognizing privilege can motivate greater sacrifice for the greater good. However, future studies may need to include a more complex experimental design in which the heterogeneity of “early developers” is addressed and we can derive more insights about how individuals recognize their advantage and privilege.

References

Kline, R., Seltzer, N., Lukinova, E., & Bynum, A. (2018). Differentiated responsibilities and prosocial behaviour in climate change mitigation.  Nature Human Behavior, 2: 653-661.

Note: An earlier version of this article was first published on the 3Quarksdaily blog.

Escape The Tyranny Of Algorithms By Leading A Life Of Poiesis

“Accused not of crimes they have committed, but of crimes they will commit. It is asserted that these men, if allowed to remain free, will at some future time commit felonies.”

From “The Minority Report” by Philip K. Dick

 

In the science fiction short story “The Minority Report” by Philip K. Dick, mutant “precogs” are able to see one to two weeks into the future. Their precognitive prophecies are decoded and analyzed by a computer, and used by the Precrime police unit pre-emptively arrest would-be perpetrators before they commit crimes. The story proposes the existence of multiple time-lines and futures, which explains why crimes can indeed be averted because the pre-emptive arrest leads to a shift in the time path towards an alternate future in which the crime does not place. But the story raises the fundamental question of how a person can be arrested and imprisoned for a crime that was not committed, if indeed the alternate future begins upon his arrest. The dilemma of pre-emptive arrests is one of the many questions pondered by the Austrian philosopher Armen Avanessian in his most recent book “Miamification”.

“Miamification” is basically a journal written during Avanessian’s two week stint as an artist-in-residence in the city of Miami during the fall of 2016, just weeks before the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. Each chapter of the book represents one day of his stay in Miami, containing musings on so many topics that it feels more like a bricolage than a collection of traditional philosophical essays. The stream-of-consciousness style of writing is filled with several digressions and side-notes. This reflects the journal-like nature of the book but it perhaps also mirrors how we peruse online texts on the web with various levels of links to other webpages as well as the snappy phrases and soundbites that we encounter during social media conversations. The book cover of the German edition lists several of the topics Avanessian ruminates about: Trump, Big Data, Beach, Pre-emptive Personality, Make American Great Again, Immigration, Climate Change, Time Complex, Post-Capitalism, Post-Internet, Recursion, Déjà-vus, Algorithms – just to name a few.

Obviously, none of these topics are exhaustively discussed in this short book, and some readers may struggle with the Ideenüberflutung (idea flooding) in each chapter. But each short chapter provides the reader with the lingering pleasure of having continuous food for thought and questions to ponder for weeks to come. Even though the chapters are not thematically structured, common themes do emerge. “The Disappearance of the Subject” is one such theme that was recently discussed in a brilliant essay by Adrian Nathan West. Another central theme is that of temporal discordance.

“Miamification” begins with physical and biological manifestations of temporal discordance, one that many who have traveled across time zones can easily relate to. Avanessian experiences jet-lag after flying from Berlin to Miami but his jet lag is not limited to having difficulties sleeping or waking up early. When reading his emails, he feels that he is continuously lagging behind. The work day in Europe is nearly over while his day in Miami is just getting started and people in Europe are expecting responses in real-time. This temporal disconnect between expectations and reality not only occurs in the time zone lag situation but even in our daily routines. For example, when tackling complex ideas, we know that we need time to analyze and ponder several concepts in depth but the reality of being perpetually connected to the world by our smartphone exposes us to continuous emails and social media pings which distract us and prevent us from devoting the necessary time. Avanessian also observes other absurd examples of temporal discordance in Miami. Instead of enjoying a swim in the warm water, many tourists appear to be more obsessed with taking selfies of themselves standing in the water so that they may capture this moment for posterity – delaying gratification in order to some time in the future enjoy the memory of a time at the beach when they decided to forgo the pleasure for swimming.

After watching the movie “Minority Report” (loosely based on the Philip K. Dick short story) on his third day in Miami, Avanessian broadens his inquiry into our relationship with time. Even though contemporary police forces do not use mutant precogs to prophecy the future, we are surrounded by computational algorithms which aim to predict behavior. Law enforcement agencies increasingly rely on predictive algorithms to identify individuals who are at risk of committing terrorist acts in the near or distant future, in fact “neuroprediction” of criminal behavior is establishing itself as a scientific discipline. Corporations such as Amazon prompt us with products that we could purchase based on algorithms that analyze our past purchases. At what point do these algorithms become self-fulfilling prophecies? Are individuals who are continuously monitored and questioned by law enforcement perhaps more likely to radicalize and commit crimes? At what point do online “suggestions” by algorithms become a subconscious mandate to buy consumables in order to remain true to our past self?

The temporal assault occurs at several fronts: Surveillance agencies and corporations use predictive algorithms about our future behavior to define and create present behavior. But these algorithms are rooted in past behaviors – thus in some ways chaining us to the past and limiting our ability to change, especially once the predictive algorithms begin influencing our present behavior. At the same time, we are being bombarded with clickbait, social media posts and sensationalist news – all which appear to glorify and obsess about the present. Their rapidity often does not allow us to analyze them in the context of the past or the future. Lastly, we are seeing the rise of reactionary forces in many countries of the world who conjure up bizarre images of a glorious past that we ought to be striving towards. Avanessian specifically mentions Donald Trump and his supporters in their Make American Great Again fervor as an example – weeks before the 2016 presidential election in the USA.

How do we best handle this dysfunctional relationship with the Past (reactionary and revisionist glorifying of the past), Present (barrage of mindless and often meaningless information about the present) and the Future (predictive algorithms which predetermine our future instead of allowing us to define our own future)? Lead a poetic life. Avanessian uses the word poetic in the original Greek sense: Poiesis – to create and produce. Poiesis requires that we prevent algorithms from dictating our behavior. Corporations prompting us to buy certain products as well as political extremists goad us into algorithmic behavior. For example, a common contemporary phenomenon in politics has been the frequent use of racist, misogynist and other offensive social media posts by far right politicians and leaders. Their scandalous and sensationalist tweets elicit a predictable backlash from those opposed to racism, misogyny and other forms of prejudice.  Even though it is absolutely necessary for those of us opposed to hatred and prejudice to voice opposition and resistance, far right activists and politicians use our predicted reactions to further embolden their political base and mock liberal-progressive citizens,and then begin their next cycle of hateful statements. This recursive cycle ends up consuming our attention and undermining our ability to be creative and escape the algorithmic life.

Poiesis, on the other hand,  creates the unexpected and unpredictable and thus generates a reality that eludes predictive algorithms. Art, music, literature, philosophy, science provide poietic paths but the challenge for us is to learn how can integrate these poietic paths into our social, economic and political lives. Political poiesis may be especially important in our current time to counter the rise of far right political movements. One of the reasons for their success is that they conjure up images of a glorious past as well as the supposed danger of a bleak future unless society returns to the status quo of the glorious past. But progressive movements now have the opportunity to offer a poietic vision of the future.

One such poietic success in the United States during the past decade has been the revolution in the acceptance of universal access to healthcare as a human right. In most countries of the developed world, all members of society have enjoyed access to universal healthcare for the past decades. However, up until approximately 10 years ago, Americans accepted the fact that they might face financial bankruptcy and denial of health insurance coverage if they were afflicted by a devastating disease such as cancer. Through the joint efforts of patients, healthcare professionals, community organizers, politicians and most importantly – citizens from all socioeconomic backgrounds – American society began to recognize access to healthcare even for those with pre-existing medical conditions as a human right.

Townhall meetings, marches and door-to-door engagement, medical journal articles, new collaborations across communities and professions were all needed to bring about this change. The sheer scale of the efforts and the creativity of the proponents took right-wing opponents by surprise who had assumed that the American public would stick to its traditional distaste for anything that resembled a universal healthcare system that was so common in other industrialized countries with strong social welfare systems. Conservative and far right politicians in the United States were confident they could repeal the laws implemented during President Barack Obama’s administration which guaranteed health insurance for all – even patients with severe prior illnesses. All subsequent efforts by right wing politicians to abolish the fundamental achievement of the universal healthcare movement to enshrine the right to obtain medical insurance despite pre-existing medical conditions have failed thus far.

The success of the US healthcare movement could serve as an inspiration for all who struggle under the yoke of algorithmic and reactive behavior. Our willingness to dream and create can allow us to break the algorithmic mold. Considering the challenges we face in our world – which include the growing socio-economic divide, the rise of nativism and racism, and the devastating impact of climate change – we need to foster poietic creativity and imagination to overcome these challenges.

Reference

Avanessian, A. (2017). Miamification. Merve Verlag.

This book is also available in an English translation published by Sternberg Press.

Note: An earlier version of this article was first published on the 3Quarksdaily blog.

The Anatomy of Friendship in a “Digital Age”

Why is the number of friendships that we can actively maintain limited to 150? The evolutionary psychologist and anthropologist Robin Dunbar at the University of Oxford is a pioneer in the study of friendship. Over several decades, he and his colleagues have investigated the nature of friendship and social relationships in non-human primates and humans. His research papers and monographs on social networks, grooming, gossip and friendship have accumulated tens of thousands of academic citations but he may be best known in popular culture for “Dunbar’s number“, the limit to the number of people with whom an individual can maintain stable social relationships. For humans, this number is approximately 150 although there are of course variations between individuals and also across one’s lifetime. The expression “stable social relationships” is what we would call friends and family members with whom we regularly interact. Most of us may know far more people but they likely fall into a category of “acquaintances” instead of “friends”. Acquaintances, for example, are fellow students and colleagues who we occasionally meet at work, but we do not regularly invite them over to share meals or swap anecdotes as we would do with our friends.

Dunbar recently reviewed more than two decades of research on humans and non-human primates in the article “The Anatomy of Friendship” and outlines two fundamental constraints: Time and our brain. In order to maintain friendships, we have to invest time. As most of us intuitively know, friendship is subject to hierarchies. Dunbar and other researchers have been able to study these hierarchies scientifically and found remarkable consistency in the structure of the friendship hierarchy across networks and cultures. This hierarchy can be best visualized as concentric circles of friendship. The innermost core circle consists of 1-2 friends, often the romantic partner and/or the closest family member. The next circle contains approximately 5 very close friends, then progressively wider circles until we reach the maximum of about 150. The wider the circle becomes, the less time we invest in “grooming” or communicating with our friends. The social time we invest also mirrors the emotional closeness we feel. It appears that up to 40% of our social time is invested in the inner circle of our 5 closest friends, 20% to our circle of 15 friends, and progressively less. Our overall social time available to “invest’ in friendships on any given day is limited by our need to sleep and work which then limits the number of friends in each circle as well as the total number of friendships.

The Circles of Friendship – modified from R Dunbar, The Anatomy of Friendship (2018)

The second constraint which limits the number of friendships we can maintain is our cognitive capacity. According to Dunbar, there are at least two fundamental cognitive processes at play in forming friendships. First, there needs to be some basis of trust in a friendship because it represents implicit social contracts, such as a promise of future support if needed and an underlying promise of reciprocity – “If you are here for me now, I will be there for you when you need me.” For a stable friendship between two individuals, both need to be aware of how certain actions could undermine this implicit contract. For example, friends who continuously borrow my books and seem to think that they are allowed to keep them indefinitely will find that there are gradually nudged to the outer circles of friendship and eventually cross into the acquaintance territory. This is not only because I feel I am being taken advantage off and the implicit social contract is being violated but also because they do not appear to put in the mental effort to realize how much I value my books and how their unilateral “borrowing” may affect me. This brings us to “mentalizing”, the second important cognitive component that is critical for stable friendships according to Dunbar. Mentalizing refers to the ability to read or understand someone else’s state of mind. To engage in an active dialogue with friends not only requires being able to read their state of mind but also infer the state of mind of people that they are talking about. These levels of mentalizing (‘I think that you feel that she was correct in …..) appear to hit a limit around four or five. Dunbar cites the example of how at a gathering, up to four people can have an active conversation in which each person is closely following what everyone else is saying but once a fifth person joins (the fifth wheel!), the conversation is likely to split up into two conversations and that the same is true for many TV shows or plays in which scenes will rarely depict more than four characters actively participating in a conversation.

Has the digital age changed the number of friends we can have? The prior research by Dunbar and his colleagues relied on traditional means of communication between friends such as face-to-face interactions and phone calls but do these findings still apply today when social media such as Facebook and Twitter allow us to have several hundred or even thousands of “friends” and “followers”? The surprising finding is that online social networks are quite similar to traditional networks! In a study of Facebook and Twitter social media networks, Dunbar and his colleagues found that social media networks exhibit a hierarchy of friendship and numbers of friends that were extremely similar to “offline” networks. Even though it is possible to have more than a thousand “friends” on Facebook, it turns out that most of the bidirectional interactions with individuals are again concentrated in very narrow circles of approximately 5, 15 and 50 individuals. Social media make it much easier to broadcast information to a broad group of individuals but this sharing of information is very different from the “grooming” of friendships which appears to be based on reciprocity in terms of building trust and mentalizing.

There is a tendency to believe that the Internet has revolutionized all forms of human communication, a belief which falls under the rubric of “internet-centrism” (See the article “Is Internet-Centrism a Religion“) according to the social researcher Evgeny Morozov. Dunbar’s research is an important reminder that core biological and psychological principles such as the anatomy of friendship in humans have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years and will not be fundamentally upstaged by technological improvements in communication. Friendship and its traditional limits are here to stay.

Reference

Dunbar R.I.M. (2018). “The Anatomy of Friendship” Trends in Cognitive Science 22(1), 32-51

 

Note: An earlier version of this article was first published on the 3Quarksdaily blog.

Neuroprediction: Using Neuroscience to Predict Violent Criminal Behavior

Can neuroscience help identify individuals who are most prone to engage in violent criminal behavior? Will it help the legal system make decisions about sentencing, probation, parole or even court-mandated treatments? A panel of researchers lead by Dr. Russell Poldrack from Stanford University recently reviewed the current state of research and outlined the challenges that need to be addressed for “neuroprediction” to gain traction.  The use of scientific knowledge to predict violent behavior is not new. Social factors such as poverty and unemployment increase the risk for engaging in violent behavior. Twin and family studies suggest that genetic factors also significantly contribute to antisocial and violent behavior but the precise genetic mechanisms remain unclear. A substantial amount of research has focused on genetic variants of the MAOA gene (monoamine oxidase A, an enzyme involved in the metabolism of neurotransmitters). Variants of MAOA have been linked to increased violent behavior but these variants are quite common – up to 40% of the US population may express this variant! As pointed out by John Horgan in Scientific American,  it is impossible to derive meaningful predictions of individual behavior based on the presence of such common gene variants.

One fundamental problem of using social and genetic predictors of criminal violent behavior in the legal setting is the group-to-individual problem. Carrying a gene or having been exposed to poverty as a child may increase the group risk for future criminal behavior but it tells us little about an individual who is part of the group. Most people who grow up in poverty or carry the above-mentioned MAOA gene variant do not engage in criminal violent behavior. Since the legal system is concerned with an individual’s guilt and his/her likelihood to commit future violent crimes, group characteristics are of little help. This is where brain imaging may represent an advancement because it can assess individual brains. Imaging individual brains might provide much better insights into a person’s brain function and potential for violent crimes than more generic assessments of behavior or genetic risk factors.

Poldrack and colleagues cite a landmark study published in 2013 by Eyal Aharoni and colleagues in which 96 adult offenders underwent brain imaging with a mobile MRI scanner before being released from one of two New Mexico state correctional facilities. The prisoners were followed for up to four years after their release and the rate of being arrested again was monitored.

This study found that lower activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC- an area of the brain involved in impulse control) was associated with a higher rate being arrested again (60% in participants with lower ACC activity, 46% in those with higher ACC activity). The sample size and rate of re-arrest was too small to see what the predictive accuracy was for violent crime re-arrests (as opposed to all re-arrests). Poldrack and colleagues lauded the study for dealing with the logistics of performing such complex brain imaging studies by using a mobile MRI scanner at the correctional facilities as well as prospectively monitoring their re-arrest rate. However, they also pointed out some limitations of the study in terms of the analysis and the need to validate the results in other groups of subjects.

Brain imaging is also fraught with the group-to-individual problem. Crude measures such as ACC activity may provide statistically significant correlations for differences between groups but do not tell us much about how any one individual is likely to behave in the future. The differences in the re-arrest rates between the high and low ACC activity groups are not that profound and it is unlikely that they would be of much use in the legal system. So is there a future for “neuroprediction” when it comes to deciding about the sentencing or parole of individuals?

Poldrack and colleagues outline some of the challenges of brain imaging for neuroprediction. One major challenge is the issue of selecting subjects. Many people may refuse to undergo brain imaging and it is quite likely that those who struggle with impulse control and discipline may be more likely to refuse brain scanning or move during the brain scanning process and thus distort the images. This could skew the results because those most likely to succumb to impulse control may never be part of the brain imaging studies. Other major challenges include using large enough and representative sample sizes, replicating studies, eliminating biases in the analyses and developing a consensus on the best analytical methods. Addressing these challenges would advance the field.

It does not appear that neuroprediction will become relevant for court cases in the near future. The points outlined by the experts remind us that we need to be cautious when interpreting brain imaging data and that solid science is required for rushing to premature speculations and hype about using brain scanners in court-rooms.

Reference

Poldrack RA et al. (2017). “Predicting Violent Behavior:What Can Neuroscience Add? Trends in Cognitive Science, (in press).

Note: An earlier version of this article was first published on the 3Quarksdaily blog.

Do We Value Physical Books More Than Digital Books?

Just a few years ago, the onslaught of digital books seemed unstoppable. Sales of electronic books (E-books) were surging, people were extolling the convenience of carrying around a whole library of thousands of books on a portable digital tablet, phones or E-book readers such as the Amazon Kindle. In addition to portability, E-books allow for highlighting and annotating of key sections, searching for keywords and names of characters, even looking up unknown vocabulary with a single touch. It seemed only like a matter of time until E-books would more or less wholly replace old-fashioned physical books. But recent data seems to challenge this notion. A Pew survey released in 2016 on the reading habits of Americans shows that E-book reading may have reached a plateau in recent years and there is no evidence pointing towards the anticipated extinction of physical books.

The researchers Ozgun Atasoy and Carey Morewedge from Boston University recently conducted a study which suggests that one reason for the stifled E-book market share growth may be that consumers simply value physical goods more than digital goods. In a series of experiments, they tested how much consumers value equivalent physical and digital items such as physical photographs and digital photographs or physical books and digital books. They also asked participants in their studies questions which allowed them to infer some of the psychological motivations that would explain the differences in values.

In one experiment, a research assistant dressed up in a Paul Revere costume asked tourists visiting Old North Church in Boston whether they would like to have their photo taken with the Paul Revere impersonator and keep the photo as a souvenir of the visit. Eighty-six tourists (average age 40 years) volunteered and were informed that they would be asked to donate money to a foundation maintaining the building. The donation could be as low as $0, and the volunteers were randomly assigned to either receiving a physical photo or a digital photo. Participants in both groups received their photo within minutes of the photo being taken, either as an instant-printed photograph or an emailed digital photograph. It turned out that the participants randomly assigned to the digital photo group donated significantly less money than those in the physical photo group (median of $1 in the digital group, $3 in the physical group).

In fact, approximately half the participants in the digital group decided to donate no money. Interestingly, the researchers also asked the participants to estimate the cost of making the photo (such as the costs of the Paul Revere costume and other materials as well as paying the photographer). Both groups estimated the cost around $3 per photo, but despite this estimate, the group receiving digital photos was much less likely to donate money, suggesting that they valued their digital souvenir less.

In a different experiment, the researchers recruited volunteer subjects (100 subjects, mean age 33) online using a web-based survey in which they asked participants how much they would be willing to pay for a physical or digital copy of either a book such as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (print-version or the Kindle E-book version) or a movie such as The Dark Knight (DVD or the iTunes digital version). Participants were also asked how much “personal ownership” they would feel for the digital versus the corresponding physical items by completing a questionnaire scored with responses ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” to statements such as “feel like it is mine”.  In addition to these ownership questions, they also indicated how much they thought they would enjoy the digital and physical versions.

The participants were willing to pay significantly more for the physical book and physical DVD than for the digital counterparts even though they estimated that the enjoyment of either version would be similar. It turned out that participants also felt a significantly stronger sense of personal ownership when it came to the physical items and that the extent of personal ownership correlated nicely with the amount they were willing to pay.

To assess whether a greater sense of personal ownership and control over the physical goods was a central factor in explaining the higher value, the researchers than conducted another experiment in which participants (275 undergraduate students, mean age of 20) were given a hypothetical scenario in which they were asked how much they would be willing to pay for either purchasing or renting textbooks in their digital and print formats. The researchers surmised that if ownership of a physical item was a key factor in explaining the higher value, then there should not be much of a difference between the estimated values of physical and digital textbook rentals. You do not “own” or “control” a book if you are merely renting it because you will have to give it up at the end of the rental period anyway. The data confirmed the hypothesis. For digital textbooks, participants were willing to pay the same price for a rental or a purchase (roughly $45), whereas they would pay nearly twice that for purchasing a physical textbook ($88). Renting a physical textbook was valued at around $59, much closer to the amount the participants would have paid for the digital versions.

This research study raises important new aspects for the digital economy by establishing that consumers likely value physical items higher and by also providing some insights into the underlying psychology. Sure, some of us may like physical books because of the tactile sensation of thumbing through pages or being able to elegantly display are books in a bookshelf. But the question of ownership and control is also an important point. If you purchase an E-book using the Amazon Kindle system, you cannot give it away as a present or sell it once you are done, and the rules for how to lend it to others are dictated by the Kindle platform. Even potential concerns about truly “owning” an E-book are not unfounded as became apparent during the infamous “1984” E-book scandal, when Amazon deleted purchased copies of the book – ironically George Orwell’s classic which decries Big Brother controlling information –from the E-book readers of its customers because of some copyright infringement issues. Even though the digital copies of 1984 had been purchased, Amazon still controlled access to the books.

Digital goods have made life more convenient and also bring with them collateral benefits such as environment-friendly reduction in paper consumption. However, some of the issues of control and ownership associated with digital goods need to be addressed to build more trust among consumers to gain more widespread usage.

Reference

Atasoy O and Morewedge CK. (2017). “Digital Goods Are Valued Less Than Physical Goods. Journal of Consumer Research, (in press).

Note: An earlier version of this article was first published on the 3Quarksdaily blog.

Optimizing Ourselves into Oblivion

The short story “Anekdote zur Senkung der Arbeitsmoral” (“An anecdote about the lowering of work ethic”) is one of the most famous stories written by the German author Heinrich Böll. In the story, an affluent tourist encounters a poorly clad fisherman who is comfortably napping in his boat. The assiduous tourist accidentally wakes up the fisherman while taking photos of the peaceful scenery – blue sky, green sea, fisherman with an old-fashioned hat – but then goes on to engage the lounging fisherman in a conversation. The friendly chat gradually turns into a sermon in which the tourist lectures the fisherman about how much more work he could be doing, how he could haul in more fish instead of lazing about, use the profits to make strategic investments, perhaps even hire employees and buy bigger boats in a few years. To what end, the fisherman asks. So that you could peacefully doze away at the beach, enjoying the beautiful sun without any worries, responds the enthusiastic tourist.

I remembered Böll’s story which was written in the 1960s – during the post-war economic miracle years (Wirtschaftswunder) when prosperity, efficiency and growth had become the hallmarks of modern Germany – while recently reading the book “Du sollst nicht funktionieren” (“You were not meant to function”) by the German author and philosopher Ariadne von Schirach. In this book, von Schirach criticizes the contemporary obsession with Selbstoptimierung (self-optimization), a term that has been borrowed from network theory and computer science where it describes systems which continuously adapt and “learn” in order to optimize their function. Selbstoptimierung is now used in a much broader sense in German culture and refers to the desire of individuals to continuously “optimize” their bodies and lives with the help of work-out regimens, diets, self-help courses and other processes. Self-optimization is a routine learning process that we all engage in. Successful learning of a new language, for example, requires continuous feedback and improvement. However, it is the continuous self-optimization as the ultimate purpose of life, instead of merely serving as  a means to an end that worries von Schirach.

She draws on many examples from Körperkult (body-cult), a slavish worship of the body that gradually replaces sensual pleasure with the purpose of discipling the body. Regular exercise and maintaining a normal weight are key factors for maintaining health but some individuals become so focused on tracking steps and sleep duration on their actigraphs, exercising or agonizing about their diets that the initial health-related goals become lose their relevance. They strive for a certain body image and resting heart rates and to reach these goals they indulge in self-discipline to maximize physical activity and curb appetite. Such individuals rarely solicit scientific information as to the actual health benefits of their exercise and food regimens and might be surprised to learn that more exercise and more diets do not necessarily lead to more health. The American Heart Association recommends roughly 30-45 minutes of physical activity daily to reduce high blood pressure and the risk of heart attacks and stroke. Even simple and straightforward walking is sufficient to meet these goals, there is no need for two-hour gym work-outs.

Why are we becoming so obsessed with self-optimization? Unfortunately, von Schirach’s analysis degenerates into a diffuse diatribe against so many different elements of contemporary culture. Capitalist ideology, a rise in narcissism and egotism, industrialization and the growing technocracy, consumerism, fear of death, greed, monetization of our lives and social media are among some of the putative culprits that she invokes. It is quite likely that many of these factors play some role in the emerging pervasiveness of the self-optimization culture – not only in Germany. However, it may be useful to analyze some of the root causes and distinguish them from facilitators. Capitalist ideology is very conducive to a self-optimization culture. Creating beauty and fitness targets as well as laying out timelines to achieve these targets is analogous to developing corporate goals, strategies and milestones. Furthermore, many corporations profit from our obsession with self-optimization. Companies routinely market weight regimens, diets, exercise programs, beauty products and many other goods or services that generate huge profits if millions of potential consumers buy into the importance of life-long self-optimization. They can set the parameters for self-optimization – ideal body images – and we just obey. According to the German philosopher Byung-Chul Han, such a diffusion of market logic and obedience to pre-ordained parameters and milestones into our day-to-day lives results in an achievement society which ultimately leads to mental fatigue and burnout.  In the case of “working out”, it is telling that a supposedly leisure physical activity uses the expression “work”, perhaps reminding us that the mindset of work persists during the exercise period.

But why would we voluntarily accept these milestones and parameters set by others? One explanation that is not really addressed by von Schirach is that obsessive self-optimization with a focus on our body may represent a retreat from the world in which we feel disempowered. Those of us who belong to the 99% know that our voices are rarely heard or respected when it comes to most fundamental issues in society such as socioeconomic inequality, rising intolerance and other forms of discrimination or prejudice. When it comes to our bodies, we may have a sense of control and empowerment that we do not experience in our work or societal roles. Self-discipline of our body gives our life a purpose with tangible goals such as lose x pounds, exercise y hours, reduce your resting heart rate by z.

Self-optimization may be a form of Ersatzempowerment but it comes at a great cost. As we begin to retreat from more fundamental societal issues and instead focus on controlling our bodies, we also gradually begin to lose the ability to dissent and question the meaning of actions. Working-out and dieting are all about How, When and What – how do I lose weight, what are my goals, when am I going to achieve it. The most fundamental questions of our lives usually focus on the Why – but self-optimization obsesses so much about How, When and What that one rarely asks “Why am I doing this?” Yet it is the Why that gives our life meaning, and self-optimization perhaps illustrates how a purpose-driven life may lose its meaning. The fisherman prompted the tourist to think about the Why in Böll’s story and perhaps we should do the same to avoid the trap of an obsessive self-optimization culture.

Reference:

von Schirach, Ariadne. Du sollst nicht funktionieren: für eine neue Lebenskunst. Klett Cotta, 2014.

 

Note: An earlier version of this article was first published on the 3Quarksdaily blog. 

Crowdfunding and Tribefunding in Science

Competition for government research grants to fund scientific research remains fierce in the United States. The budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which constitute the major source of funding for US biological and medical research, has been increased only modestly during the past decade but it is not even keeping up with inflation. This problem is compounded by the fact that more scientists are applying for grants now than one or two decades ago, forcing the NIH to enforce strict cut-offs and only fund the top 10-20% of all submitted research proposals. Such competition ought to be good for the field because it could theoretically improve the quality of science. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to discern differences between excellent research grants. For example, if an institute of the NIH has a cut-off at the 13 percentile range, then a grant proposal judged to be in the top 10% would receive funding but a proposal in top 15% would end up not being funded. In an era where universities are also scaling back their financial support for research, an unfunded proposal could ultimately lead to the closure of a research laboratory and the dismissal of several members of a research team. Since the prospective assessment of a research proposal’s scientific merits are somewhat subjective, it is quite possible that the budget constraints are creating cemeteries of brilliant ideas and concepts, a world of scientific what-ifs that are forever lost.

Red Panda

How do we scientists deal with these scenarios? Some of us keep soldiering on, writing one grant after the other. Others change and broaden the direction of their research, hoping that perhaps research proposals in other areas are more likely to receive the elusive scores that will qualify for funding. Yet another approach is to submit research proposals to philanthropic foundations or non-profit organizations, but most of these organizations tend to focus on research which directly impacts human health. Receiving a foundation grant to study the fundamental mechanisms by which the internal clocks of plants coordinate external timing cues such as sunlight, food and temperature, for example, would be quite challenging. One alternate source of research funding that is now emerging is “scientific crowdfunding” in which scientists use web platforms to present their proposed research project to the public and thus attract donations from a large number of supporters. The basic underlying idea is that instead of receiving a $50,000 research grant from one foundation or government agency, researchers may receive smaller donations from 10, 50 or even a 100 supporters and thus finance their project.

The website experiment.com is a scientific crowdfunding platform which presents an intriguing array of projects in search of backers, ranging from “Death of a Tyrant: Help us Solve a Late Cretaceous Dinosaur Mystery!” to “Eating tough stuff with floppy jaws – how do freshwater rays eat crabs, insects, and mollusks?” Many of the projects include a video in which the researchers outline the basic goals and significance of their project and then also provide more detailed information on the webpage regarding how the funds will be used. There is also a “Discussion” section for each proposed project in which researchers answer questions raised by potential backers and, importantly, a “Results” in which researchers can report emerging results once their project is funded.

How can scientists get involved in scientific crowdfunding? Julien Vachelard and colleagues recently published an excellent overview of scientific crowdfunding. They analyzed the projects funded on experiment.com and found that projects which successfully achieved the funding goal tend to have 30-40 backers. The total amount of funds raised for most projects ranged from about $3,000 to $5,000. While these amounts are impressive, they are still far lower than a standard foundation or government agency grant in biomedical research. These smaller amounts could support limited materials to expand ongoing projects, but they are not sufficient to carry out standard biomedical research projects which cover salaries and stipends of the researchers. The annual stipends for postdoctoral research fellows alone run in the $40,000 – $55,000 range.

Vachelard and colleagues also provide great advice for how scientists can increase the likelihood of funding. Attention span is limited on the internet so researchers need to convey the key message of their research proposal in a clear, succinct and engaging manner. It is best to use powerful images and videos, set realistic goals (such as $3,000 to $5,000), articulate what the funds will be used for, participate in discussions to answer questions and also update backers with results as they emerge. Presenting research in a crowdfunding platform is an opportunity to educate the public and thus advance science, forcing scientists to develop better communication skills. These collateral benefits to the scientific enterprise extend beyond the actual amount of funding that is solicited.

One of the concerns that is voiced about scientific crowdfunding is that it may only work for “panda bear science“, i.e. scientific research involving popular themes such as cute and cuddly animals or studying life on other planets. However, a study of what actually gets funded in a scientific crowdfunding campaign revealed that the subject matter was not as important as how well the researchers communicated with their audience. A bigger challenge for the long-term success of scientific crowdfunding may be the limited amounts that are raised and therefore only cover the cost of small sub-projects but are neither sufficient to embark on exploring exciting new ideas and independent ideas nor offset salary and personnel costs. Donating $20 or $50 to a project is very different from donating amounts such as $1,000 because the latter requires not only the necessary financial resources but also a represents a major personal investment in the success of the research project. To initiate an exciting new biomedical research project in the $50,000 or $100,000 range, one needs several backers who are willing to donate $1,000 or more.

Perhaps one solution could be to move from a crowdfunding towards a tribefunding model. Crowds consist of a mass of anonymous people, mostly strangers in a confined space who do not engage each other. Tribes, on the other hand, are characterized by individuals who experience a sense of belonging and fellowship, they share and take responsibility for each other. The “tribes” in scientific tribefunding would consist of science supporters or enthusiasts who recognize the importance of the scientific work and also actively participate in discussions not just with the scientists but also with each other. Members of a paleontology tribe could include specialists and non-specialists who are willing to put in the required time to study the scientific background of a proposed paleontology research project, understand how it would advance the field and how even negative results (which are quite common in science) could be meaningful.

Tribefunding in higher education and science may sound like a novel concept but certain aspects of tribefunding are already common practice in the United States, albeit under different names. When wealthy alumni establish endowments for student scholarships, fellowship programs or research centers at their alma mater, it is in part because they feel a tribe-like loyalty towards the institutions that laid the cornerstones of their future success. The students and scholars who will benefit from these endowments are members of the same academic institution or tribe. The difference between the currently practiced form of philanthropic funding and the proposed tribefunding model is that tribe identity would not be defined by where one graduated from but instead by scientific interests.

Tribefunding could also impact the review process of scientific proposals. Currently, peer reviewers who assess the quality of scientific proposals for government agencies spend a substantial amount of time assessing the strengths and limitations of each proposal, and then convene either in person or via conference calls to arrive at a consensus regarding the merits of a proposal. Researchers often invest months of effort when they prepare research proposals which is why peer reviewers take their work very seriously and devote the required time to review each proposal carefully. Although the peer review system for grant proposals is often criticized because reviewers can make errors when they assess the quality of proposals, there are no established alternatives for how to assess research proposals. Most peer reviewers also realize that they are part of a “tribe”, with the common interest of selecting the best science. However, the definition of a “peer” is usually limited to other scientists, most of whom are tenured professors at academic institutions and does not really solicit input from non-academic science supporters.  In a tribefunding model, the definition of a “peer” would be expanded to professional scientists as well as science supporters for any given area of science. All members of the tribe could participate during the review and selection of the best projects  as well as throughout the funding period of the research projects that receive the support.

Merging the grassroots character and public outreach of crowdfunding with the sense of fellowship and active dialogue in a “scientific tribe” could take scientific crowdfunding to the next level. A comment section on a webpage is not sufficient to develop such a “tribe” affiliation but regular face-to-face meetings or conventional telephone/Skype conference calls involving several backers (independent of whether they can donate $50 or $5,000) may be more suitable. Developing a sense of ownership through this kind of communication would mean that every member of the science “tribe” realizes that they are a stakeholder. This sense of project ownership may not only increase donations, but could also create a grassroots synergy between laboratory and tribe, allowing for meaningful education and intellectual exchange.

Reference:

Vachelard J, Gambarra-Soares T, Augustini G, Riul P, Maracaja-Coutinho V (2016) A Guide to Scientific Crowdfunding. PLoS Biol 14(2): e1002373. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002373

Note: An earlier version of this article was first published on the 3Quarksdaily blog.

 

Vachelard J, Gambarra-Soares T, Augustini G, Riul P, & Maracaja-Coutinho V (2016). A Guide to Scientific Crowdfunding. PLoS Biology, 14 (2) PMID: 26886064

Are American Professors More Responsive to Requests Made by White Male Students?

Less than one fifth of PhD students in the United States will be able to pursue tenure track academic faculty careers once they graduate from their program. Reduced federal funding for research and dwindling support from the institutions for their tenure-track faculty are some of the major reasons for why there is such an imbalance between the large numbers of PhD graduates and the limited availability of academic positions. Upon completing the program, PhD graduates have to consider non-academic job opportunities such as in the industry, government agencies and non-profit foundations but not every doctoral program is equally well-suited to prepare their graduates for such alternate careers. It is therefore essential for prospective students to carefully assess the doctoral program they want to enroll in and the primary mentor they would work with. The best approach is to proactively contact prospective mentors, meet with them and learn about the research opportunities in their group but also discuss how completing the doctoral program would prepare them for their future careers.

The vast majority of professors will gladly meet a prospective graduate student and discuss research opportunities as well as long-term career options, especially if the student requesting the meeting clarifies the goal of the meeting. However, there are cases when students wait in vain for a response. Is it because their email never reached the professor because it got lost in the internet ether or a spam folder? Was the professor simply too busy to respond? A research study headed by Katherine Milkman from the University of Pennsylvania suggests that the lack of response from the professor may in part be influenced by the perceived race or gender of the student.

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Milkman and her colleagues conducted a field experiment in which 6,548 professors at the leading US academic institutions (covering 89 disciplines) were contacted via email to meet with a prospective graduate student. Here is the text of the email that was sent to each professor.

Subject Line: Prospective Doctoral Student (On Campus Next

Monday)

Dear Professor [surname of professor inserted here],

I am writing you because I am a prospective doctoral student with considerable interest in your research. My plan is to apply to doctoral programs this coming Fall, and I am eager to learn as much as I can about research opportunities in the meantime.

I will be on campus next Monday, and although I know it is short notice, I was wondering if you might have 10 minutes when you would be willing to meet with me to briefly talk about your work and any possible opportunities for me to get involved in your research. Any time that would be convenient for you would be fine with me, as meeting with you is my first priority during this campus visit.

 Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Sincerely,

[Student’s full name inserted here]

As a professor who frequently receives emails from people who want to work in my laboratory, I feel that the email used in the research study was extremely well-crafted. The student only wants a brief meeting to explore potential opportunities without trying to extract any specific commitment from the professor. The email clearly states the long-term goal – applying to doctoral programs. The tone is also very polite and the student expresses willingness of the prospective student to a to the professor’s schedule. Each email was also personally addressed with the name of the contacted faculty member.

Milkman’s research team then assessed whether the willingness of the professors to respond depended on the gender or ethnicity of the prospective student.  Since this was an experiment, the emails and student names were all fictional but the researchers generated names which most readers would clearly associate with a specific gender and ethnicity.

Here is a list of the names they used:

White male names:  Brad Anderson, Steven Smith

White female names:  Meredith Roberts, Claire Smith

Black male names: Lamar Washington, Terell Jones

Black female names: Keisha Thomas, Latoya Brown

Hispanic male names: Carlos Lopez, Juan Gonzalez

Hispanic female names: Gabriella Rodriguez, Juanita Martinez

Indian male names: Raj Singh, Deepak Patel

Indian female names: Sonali Desai, Indira Shah

Chinese Male names; Chang Huang, Dong Lin

Chinese female names: Mei Chen, Ling Wong

The researchers assessed whether the professors responded (either by agreeing to meet or providing a reason for why they could not meet) at all or whether they simply ignored the email and whether the rate of response depended on the ethnicity/gender of the student.

The overall response rate of the professors ranged from about 60% to 80%, depending on the research discipline as well as the perceived ethnicity and gender of the prospective student. When the emails were signed with names suggesting a white male background of the student, professors were far less likely to ignore the email when compared to those signed with female names or names indicating an ethnic minority background. Professors in the business sciences showed the strongest discrimination in their response rates. They ignored only 18% of emails when it appeared that they had been written by a white male and ignored 38% of the emails if they were signed with names indicating a female gender or ethnic minority background. Professors in the education disciplines ignored 21% of emails with white male names versus 35% with female or minority names. The discrimination gaps in the health sciences (33% vs 43%) and life sciences (32% vs 39%) were smaller but still significant, whereas there was no statistical difference in the humanities professor response rates. Doctoral programs in the fine arts were an interesting exception where emails from apparent white male students were more likely to be ignored (26%) than those of female or minority candidates (only 10%).

The discrimination primarily occurred at the initial response stage. When professors did respond, there was no difference in terms of whether they were able to make time for the student. The researchers also noted that responsiveness discrimination in any discipline was not restricted to one gender or ethnicity. In business doctoral programs, for example, professors were most likely to ignore emails with black female names and Indian male names. Significant discrimination against white female names (when compared to white males names) predicted an increase in discrimination against other ethnic minorities. Surprisingly, the researchers found that having higher representation of female and minority faculty at an institution did not necessarily improve the responsiveness towards requests from potential female or minority students.

This carefully designed study with a large sample size of over 6,500 professors reveals the prevalence of bias against women and ethnic minorities at the top US institutions. This bias may be so entrenched and subconscious that it cannot be remedied by simply increasing the percentage of female or ethnic minority professors in academia. Instead, it is important that professors understand that they may be victims of these biases even if they do not know it. Something as simple as deleting an email from a prospective student because we think that we are too busy to respond may be indicative of an insidious gender or racial bias that we need to understand and confront. Increased awareness and introspection as well targeted measures by institutions are the important first steps to ensure that students receive the guidance and mentorship they need, independent of their gender or ethnic background.

Reference:

Milkman KL, Akinola M, Chugh D. (2015). What Happens Before? A Field Experiment Exploring How Pay and Representation Differentially Shape Bias on the Pathway Into Organizations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(6), 1678–1712.

Note: An earlier version of this post was first published on the 3Quarksdaily Blog.

Milkman KL, Akinola M, & Chugh D (2015). What happens before? A field experiment exploring how pay and representation differentially shape bias on the pathway into organizations. The Journal of applied psychology, 100 (6), 1678-712 PMID: 25867167

Imagine: Listening to Songs Which Make Us More Generous

It does not come as a surprise that background music in a café helps create the ambience and affects how much customers enjoy sipping their cappuccinos. But recent research suggests that the choice of lyrics can even impact the social behavior of customers. The researcher Nicolas Ruth and his colleagues from the University of Würzburg (Bavaria, Germany) assembled a playlist of 18 songs with pro-social lyrics which they had curated by surveying 74 participants in an online questionnaire as to which songs conveyed a pro-social message. Examples of pro-social songs most frequently nominated by the participants included “Imagine” by John Lennon or “Heal the World” by Michael Jackson. The researchers then created a parallel playlist of 18 neutral songs by the same artists in order to truly discern the impact of the pro-social lyrics.

Here is an excerpt of both playlists

Artist                                    Pro-social playlist               Neutral playlist

P!nk                                         Dear Mr. President                    Raise Your Glass

John Lennon                           Imagine                                     Stand By Me

Michael Jackson                    Heal the World                         Dirty Diana

Nicole                                      Ein bisschen Frieden               Alles nur für dich

Pink Floyd                               Another Brick in the Wall      Wish You Were Here

Scorpions                                Wind of Change                        Still Loving You

Wiz Khalifa                              See You Again                          Black and Yellow

The researchers then arranged for either the neutral or the pro-social playlist to be played in the background in a Würzburg café during their peak business hours and to observe the behavior of customers. The primary goal of the experiment was to quantify the customers’ willingness to pay a surcharge of 0.30 Euros for fair trade coffee instead of regular coffee. Fair trade coffee is more expensive because it is obtained through organizations which offer better trading conditions to coffee bean farmers, prohibit child labor and support sustainable farming practices. Information about fair trade coffee was presented on a blackboard in the center of the café so that all customers would walk past it and the server was trained by the researchers to offer the fair trade surcharge in a standardized manner. The server also waited for a minimum of six minutes before taking the orders of guests so that they would be able to hear at least two songs in the background. During the observation period, 123 customers heard the prosocial playlist whereas 133 heard the neutral playlist.

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The effect of this brief exposure to prosocial songs was quite remarkable. The percentage of customers who opted for the more expensive fair trade coffee option doubled when they head prosocial songs! Only 18% of customers hearing the neutral playlist were willing to pay the extra 0.30 Euros – even though they had also seen the information board about the benefits of fair trade coffee – but 38% of the customers hearing prosocial songs opted for the fair trade option.

Interestingly, hearing prosocial songs did not affect the tipping behavior of the customers. Independent of what music was playing in the background, customers tipped the server roughly 12% of the bill. This is in contrast to a prior study conducted in a French restaurant in which hearing prosocial songs increased the tipping behavior. One factor explaining the difference could be the manner by which the songs were selected. The French study specifically created a playlist of prosocial songs with French lyrics whereas the Würzburg playlist contained mostly English-language songs, often with global themes such as world peace, brotherhood and abolishing boundaries. Supporting fair trade may be more consistent with the images evoked by these global-themed songs than increased tipping of a server in Germany. It is also important to note that servers or waiters in Germany are comparatively well-compensated by restaurants and cafés, therefore they do not really depend on their income from tips.

The Würzburg experiment raises some intriguing questions about how music – either consciously or subconsciously – affects our immediate decision-making. The researchers went to great lengths to minimize confounding factors by matching up songs from the same artists in both playlists. Their work is also one of the first examples of a field study in a real-world setting because prior studies linking music and pro-social behavior have been mostly conducted in laboratory settings where pro-social behavior is experimentally simulated. But one also needs to consider some caveats before generalizing the results of the study.

Würzburg is a university town where students represent a significant proportion of the population. The researchers estimated that more than 40% of the customers were in their 20s, consistent with a principal student clientele which may be more mindful of the importance of fair trade. The history of Würzburg is also noteworthy because more than 80% of the city was destroyed in a matter of minutes during the Second World War when the British Royal Air force firebombed this predominantly civilian city and killed an estimated 5,000 residents. Residents of the city may be therefore especially sensitive to songs and imagery that evoke the importance of peace and the perils of war.

Some of the next steps in exploring this fascinating link between background music and behavior is to replicate the findings in other cities and also with participants from varying age groups and cultural backgrounds. Another avenue of research could be to assess whether the content of the lyrics affects distinct forms of behavior. Are there some prosocial songs which would increase local prosocial behavior such as tipping or supporting local charities whereas others may increase global social awareness? How long do the effects of the music last? Are customers consciously aware of the lyrics they are hearing in the background or are they just reacting subconsciously? The number of questions raised by this study shows us how exciting the topic is and that we will likely see more field studies in the years to come that will enlighten us.

References

1.              Ruth, N. (2016). “Heal the World”: A field experiment on the effects of music with prosocial lyrics on prosocial behavior. Psychology of Music, (in press).

2.              Jacob, C., Guéguen, N., & Boulbry, G. (2010). Effects of songs with prosocial lyrics on tipping behavior in a restaurant. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 29(4), 761-763.

 

Note: An earlier version of this article was first published on the 3Quarksdaily blog.

 

Ruth, N. (2016). “Heal the World”: A field experiment on the effects of music with prosocial lyrics on prosocial behavior Psychology of Music DOI: 10.1177/0305735616652226

The Mesh of Civilizations in Cyberspace

“The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics.”

—Samuel P. Huntington (1972-2008) “The Clash of Civilizations“

In 1993, the Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington published his now infamous paper The Clash of Civilizations in the journal Foreign Affairs. Huntington hypothesized that conflicts in the post-Cold War era would occur between civilizations or cultures and not between ideologies. He divided the world into eight key civilizations which reflected common cultural and religious heritages: Western, Confucian (also referred to as “Sinic”), Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin-American and African. In his subsequent book “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order“, which presented a more detailed account of his ideas and how these divisions would fuel future conflicts, Huntington also included the Buddhist civilization as an additional entity. Huntington’s idea of grouping the world in civilizational blocs has been heavily criticized for being overly simplistic and ignoring the diversity that exists within each “civilization”. For example, the countries of Western Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia were all grouped together under “Western Civilization” whereas Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Gulf states were all grouped as “Islamic Civilization” despite the fact that the member countries within these civilizations exhibited profound differences in terms of their cultures, languages, social structures and political systems. On the other hand, China’s emergence as a world power that will likely challenge the economic dominance of Western Europe and the United States, lends credence to a looming economic and political clash between the “Western” and “Confucian” civilizations. The Afghanistan war and the Iraq war between military coalitions from the “Western Civilization” and nations ascribed to the “Islamic Civilization” both occurred long after Huntington’s predictions were made and are used by some as examples of the hypothesized clash of civilizations.

 

It is difficult to assess the validity of Huntington’s ideas because they refer to abstract notions of cultural and civilizational identities of nations and societies without providing any clear evidence on the individual level. Do political and economic treaties between the governments of countries – such as the European Union – mean that individuals in these countries share a common cultural identity?

Also, the concept of civilizational blocs was developed before the dramatic increase in the usage of the internet and social media which now facilitate unprecedented opportunities for individuals belonging to distinct “civilizations” to interact with each other. One could therefore surmise that civilizational blocs might have become relics of the past in a new culture of global connectivity. A team of researchers from Stanford University, Cornell University and Yahoo recently decided to evaluate the “connectedness” of the hypothesized Huntington civilizations in cyberspace and published their results in the article “The Mesh of Civilizations in the Global Network of Digital Communication“.

The researchers examined Twitter users and the exchange of emails between Yahoo-Mail users in 90 countries with a minimum population of five million. In total, they analyzed “hundreds of millions of anonymized email and Twitter communications among tens of millions of worldwide users to map global patterns of transnational interpersonal communication”. Twitter data is public and freely available for researchers to analyze whereas emails had to be de-identified for the analysis. The researchers did not have any access to the content of the emails, they only analyzed whether users any given country were emailing users in other countries. The researchers focused on bi-directional ties. This means that ties between Twitter user A and B were only counted as a “bi-directional” tie or link if A followed B and B followed A on Twitter. Similarly, for the analysis of emails analysis, the researchers only considered email ties in which user X emailed user Y, and there was at least one email showing that user Y had also emailed user X. This requirement for bi-directionality was necessary to exclude spam tweets or emails in which one user may send out large numbers of messages to thousands of users without there being any true “tie” or “link” between the users that would suggest an active dialogue or communication.

Credit: State et al, PloS ONE 2015; Countries are clustered based on the difference between observed and expected density of social ties in 90 countries with population above 5 million, based on interpersonal email and Twitter communication.

The researchers then created a cluster graph which is shown in the accompanying figure. Each circle represents a country and the 1000 strongest ties between countries are shown. The closer a circle is to another circle, the more email and Twitter links exist between individuals residing in the two countries. For the mathematical analysis to be unbiased, the researchers did not assign any countries to “civilizations” but they did observe key clusters of countries emerge which were very close to each other in the graph. They then colored in the circles with colors to reflect the civilization category as defined by Huntington and also colored ties within a civilization as the same color whereas ties between countries of two distinct civilization categories were kept in gray.

At first glance, these data may appear as a strong validation of the Huntington hypothesis because the circles of any given color (i.e. a Huntington civilization category) are overall far closer to each other on average that circles of a different color. For example, countries belonging to the “Latin American Civilization” (pink) countries strongly cluster together and some countries such as Chile (CL) and Peru (PE) have nearly exclusive intra-civilizational ties (pink). Some of the “Slavic-Orthodox Civilization” (brown) show strong intra-civilizational ties but Greece (GR), Bulgaria (BG) and Romania (RO) are much closer to Western European countries than other Slavic-Orthodox countries, likely because these three countries are part of the European Union and have shared a significant cultural heritage with what Huntington considers the “Western Civilization”. “Islamic Civilization” (green) countries also cluster together but they are far more spread out. Pakistan (PK) and Bangladesh (BD) are far closer to each other and to India (IN), which belongs to the “Hindu Civilization” (purple) than to Tunisia (TN) and Yemen (YE) which Huntington also assigned to an ‘Islamic Civilization”.

One obvious explanation for there being increased email and Twitter exchanges between individuals belonging to the same civilization is the presence of a shared language. The researchers therefore analyzed the data by correcting for language and found that even though language did contribute to Twitter and email ties, the clustering according to civilization was present even when taking language into account. Interestingly, of the various factors that could account for the connectedness between users, it appeared that religion (as defined by the World Religion Database) was one of the major factors, consistent with Huntington’s focus on religion as a defining characteristic of a civilization. The researchers conclude that “contrary to the borderless portrayal of cyberspace, online social interactions do not appear to have erased the fault lines Huntington proposed over a decade before the emergence of social media.”  But they disagree with Huntington in that closeness of countries belonging to a civilization does not necessarily imply that it will lead to conflicts or clashes with other civilizations.

It is important to not over-interpret one study on Twitter and Email links and make inferences about broader cultural or civilizational identities just because individuals in two countries follow each other on Twitter or write each other emails. The study did not investigate cultural identities of individuals and some of the emails could have been exchanged as part of online purchases without indicating any other personal ties. However, the data presented by the researchers does reveal some fascinating new insights about digital connectivity that are not discussed in much depth by the researchers. China (CN) and Great Britain (GB) emerge as some of the most highly connected countries at the center of the connectivity map with strong global ties, including India and countries in Africa. Whether this connectivity reflects the economic growth and increasing global relevance of China or a digital footprint of the British Empire even decades after its demise would be a worthy topic of investigation. The public availability of Twitter data makes it a perfect tool to analyze the content of Twitter communications and thus define how social media is used to engage in dialogue between individuals across cultural, religious and political boundaries by analyzing culturally relevant keywords used in tweets. Analyses of Twitter data over time could test the intriguing hypothesis whether connectivity and the content of communications between users living in different countries change over time. Such a study would be even more informative in terms of linking cyberspace connectivity to cultural identities and could provide insights into the evolution of digital ties over time.

 

References

Huntington, S. P. (1993). The Clash of Civilizations. Foreign Affairs, 72(3) 22-49.

State, B., Park, P., Weber, I., & Macy, M. (2015). The mesh of civilizations in the global network of digital communication. PLoS ONE, 10(5), e0122543.

Note: An earlier version of this article was first published on the 3Quarksdaily blog.

State, B., Park, P., Weber, I., & Macy, M. (2015). The Mesh of Civilizations in the Global Network of Digital Communication PLOS ONE, 10 (5) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0122543