'Priming', and discussion etiquette.

[studiot]

There has been a move in the UK NHS to invoke the technique of 'social priming' to improve workplace communications during these stressful times.

The work of Yale Professor John Bargh has been put forward to support this.

Quote

There has been lots of research on priming and in 1996, researcher Professor John Bargh did an experiment to see if he could influence behaviour with a simple activity.

The researchers had three groups of participants:

*       The first group had the "Rude Condition" and had to unscramble a list of rude words like 'bold', 'aggressive', 'disturb'.

*       The second group, called "Polite Condition" had a series of polite words like 'patient', 'respect' and 'respectful'.

*       The last group, the "Neutral Condition", had words that were neither polite nor rude.

When a participant was finished unscrambling words, they were instructed to walk down the hall and tell the researcher they were finished. Unbeknown to them, the researcher would be in a long and fake discussion with another researcher when the participant arrived. The experiment was to test how long it would take for each group to interrupt the researcher to tell him that they were finished.

Within 10 minutes, 60% of the rude group had interrupted, while only 40% of the neutral group and 20% of the polite group had interceded. This is a very simple experiment, but with powerful effects. It tells us that people can be subconsciously primed to act differently depending on the priming stimulus.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03755-2

 

However there has been more recent work to suggest this is less effect than JB found

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/01/02/now-john-barghs-famous-hot-coffee-study-has-failed-to-replicate/

 

So my question for discussion here is

In the light of some recent rather bitchy threads, could we learn anything at SF to improve our own communication skills ?

 

I will apologise in advance for discounting my usual typolexis.

[exchemist]

1 hour ago, studiot said:

There has been a move in the UK NHS to invoke the technique of 'social priming' to improve workplace communications during these stressful times.

The work of Yale Professor John Bargh has been put forward to support this.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03755-2

 

However there has been more recent work to suggest this is less effect than JB found

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/01/02/now-john-barghs-famous-hot-coffee-study-has-failed-to-replicate/

 

So my question for discussion here is

In the light of some recent rather bitchy threads, could we learn anything at SF to improve our own communication skills ?

 

I will apologise in advance for discounting my usual typolexis.

Professor Bargh sounds like a Private Eye joke. But I mustn't be bitchy...... 

Seriously I'm not sure how any of this can be applied. Personally, when I find myself in conversation with some who recites a lot of words like respect, respectful and patient, I find I soon want to get away, before my toes start curling. 

[iNow]

2 hours ago, studiot said:

In the light of some recent rather bitchy threads, could we learn anything at SF to improve our own communication skills ?

So, after creating a new member profile, you require every requester to unscramble polite words for 10 minutes before they post? Okay, that might work for day 1, but then the effect falls off when they return next week / next month.

Even if the effect the persistent, the marginal ROI this would bring doesn't IMO seem to warrant the burden this would place on new members. It adds a lot perceptual friction to the process and a massive percentage of people will simply refuse and close their browser never to return. 

It's an interesting study, though. 

[Phi for All]

2 hours ago, studiot said:

In the light of some recent rather bitchy threads, could we learn anything at SF to improve our own communication skills ?

The long-time members have all been through the process of learning to avoid behavior that hampers discussion, but we still see a lot of posts that attack people instead of ideas, and fallacious logic being used as arguments. It's always good to remind ourselves that having peers to discuss things with is a very valuable tool, and it needs to be cared for respectfully. You lot are often the sanest part of my day, and it's really appreciated.

Many of the newbies don't understand discussion, and tend towards blogging or making over-generalized statements. There was a recent one where the poster claimed something universal about all vegetarians, and when called out on it, they dialed it back to "many may feel this way". How can they know they're likely to be downvoted or chastised if they jump on a soapbox right away? It's obvious a lot of new joins aren't reading the rules first.

[Peterkin]

In order to influence people to be polite, couldn't one just try being polite to them? I have found in face-to-face conversation that most humans respond in kind - even if they're wary at first, it's hard to be aggressive toward someone who shows them sympathy: those mirror neurons are powerful. In print, the effect is very much diluted: we are all participating from a place of isolation - and some feel more isolated than others, for various reasons. People with unpopular ideas, for example, have already grown accustomed to a defensive or adversarial posture, and their vocabulary will reflect that. People, especially very young ones, who have some highly original theory (they all think so, just as we all did) may not have had enough opportunity to test it in live discussion with their peers; they're starting cold, as it were, and have to be shown how that works. Some, of course, have difficulty articulating their thoughts on a keyboard, in English, without hand gestures or facial expression; they may require some patient decoding. 

There were so many philosophy forums a few years ago and there are so few now that the escape-pods will probably keep floating in. The survivors are coming from environments with very different atmospheres, and will need a period of adjustment. The next generation is also coming from a different background than older generations, and adjustment may have be made both ways. I don't think a rite of passage is necessary. Some people will go away on their own (If the researcher I was supposed to report to ignored me standing in the doorway, I wouldn't interrupt, and wouldn't wait ten minutes - I'd just go quietly home, whichever words I'd been asked to unscramble) some always have to be ejected (If they're on a mission or naturally combative, doing a puzzle or getting minus red marks won't change their behaviour). Most will be  fine. 

As for the experiments, I'd imagine most people are kindly disposed and generous when they feel comfortable. On a very hot summer day, the same students would probably buy one another a beer if they were holding a cold beer, while having to hold a hot coffee would predispose them to impatience. Of course we're more likely to feel friendly when our belly is full of good soup - not because it fills the the void of social warmth, but because we're animals with physical bodies that keep yammering at our minds with their demands.  Any physical stimuli in a psychological experiment will skew the results. 

[NTuft]

On 2/15/2022 at 4:30 AM, studiot said:

There has been a move in the UK NHS to invoke the technique of 'social priming' to improve workplace communications during these stressful times.

On 2/15/2022 at 4:30 AM, studiot said:

So my question for discussion here is

In the light of some recent rather bitchy threads, could we learn anything at SF to improve our own communication skills ?

On 2/15/2022 at 5:40 AM, exchemist said:

Professor Bargh sounds like a Private Eye joke. But I mustn't be bitchy...... 

On 2/15/2022 at 7:12 AM, iNow said:

So, after creating a new member profile, you require every requester to unscramble polite words for 10 minutes before they post? Okay, that might work for day 1, but then the effect falls off when they return next week / next month.

I found the direct application of their same method to be a humorous idea. 

Having gone around a bit more, I've been prompted to actually read the guidelines and etiquette rules, not sure I read them thoroughly at first. It'd be a bit of work, but maybe a way to set the tone would be to make it mandatory to go through a test. You break the Guidelines and Etiquette into sections that require answer be entered to try to make sure that they were actually read through.

Then there could be a cue, like, "Did you fail the kitsch test?" "Do you need to retake the kitsch test?"(We don't want to offend the ladies), as a call to order in a thread that's gotten testy, contentious. Having read a bit about priming, and the terrible problems in the social sciences with repeatable experimental results and data collection methods (see Dunning-Kruger effect), it may be so highly individualized as to how people respond that it wouldn't be worth the effort to set up the test. Save for if members took it upon themselves to try to be externally considerate and insist on the rules when they're infringed on, community policing really.

I was probably violating rules unwittingly... And last I doubt the board here is set up for a click-through fill-in-the-blank type test.

Edited May 3, 2022 by NTuft