Cognitive Design

Exerting mental effort to pay attention means bad design!

Distraction and multi-tasking are getting more attention as design problems. Distracted students, drivers, parents and workers appear to be less productive and even unsafe. More broadly, we think and live in the future or the past and fail to be mindful of the present.   We have been driven to such a high level of distraction in our daily life that some researchers and authors see a “coming dark age” and are calling for a national movement to regain our focus. I am alluding to Maggie Jackson’s book on Distraction:The erosion of attention and the coming dark age.  A great read for cognitive designers dealing with distraction and multi-tasking.

From a cognitive design standpoint, distraction and attention come down to how well we manage a user’s mental energy.

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How do we decide what to spend our tax money on? Who should pay what level of tax to fund these public goods?   This is a very hard problem. One thing that makes it hard is it is impossible to determine what people really want to pay for.  If you ask tax payers how much they want to pay for a given service they will always low-ball it.  Turns out we have a cognitive bias towards wanting to get a “free ride”. We have a built in need to take advantage of the natural incentive this type of question creates.

Interesting new research from the California Institute of Technology suggests we may be able to use fMRIs or brain scanning technology to determine objectively how much people value something. To quote:

 “This is one of the first-ever applications of neurotechnology to real-life economic problems, the researchers note. “We have shown that by applying tools from neuroscience to the public-goods problem, we can get solutions that are significantly better than those that can be obtained without brain data,” says Antonio Rangel, associate professor of economics at Caltech and the paper’s principal investigator.”

This research opens up many cognitive design possibilities. As the author points out:

 ”… it is possible to imagine a future in which, instead of a vote on a proposition to fund a new highway, this technology is used to scan a random sample of the people who would benefit from the highway to see whether it’s really worth the investment. “It would be an interesting alternative way to decide where to spend the government’s money,” he notes.”

I get notes and calls regularly asking about doing cognitive design for older adults. So I am always on the look out for new scientific insights into how the elderly think and feel. Found a very interesting study on Why So Many Seniors Get Swindled that claims:

“… studies using brain imaging suggest that a subset of older adults who have no diagnosable neurological or psychiatric disease may experience disproportionate, age-related decline in specific neural systems crucial for complex decision-making. New functional neuroimaging findings, along with results from behavioral, psychophysiological and structural imaging studies of the brain, indicate that these seniors may be losing their ability to make complex choices that require effective emotional processing to analyze short-term and long-term considerations. Older adults in this category fall prey to the promise of an immediate reward or a simple solution to a complicated problem. They fail to detect the longer-range adverse consequences of their actions. Finally, they may assume long-term benefits in situations where there are none. We see these characteristics as direct consequences of neurological dysfunction in systems that are critical for bringing emotion-related signals to bear on decision-making. ”

In short, changes in their frontal lobe create a new type of age-related cognitive bias towards selecting simple solutions and immediate rewards reguardless of  longer-term consequences.   

This goes much deeper than the typical assumption that the elderly are more susceptible to fraud because of loneliness, guilt or some other cognitive need, or worse, that they have some form of dementia.

We mimic the behaviors around us especially those in our “in group”.  Behaviors spread through groups sometimes as swiftly as a contagion. Yawning, laughing, happiness, skipping school, smoking, obesity, cheating, and bullying are a few of the behaviors that have been shown to spread contagiously.

Some of these vector through biology, others direct influence and still others through social network effects. Contagious behavior, like an idea virus or viral product (e.g. a video clip) has a unique design pattern or set of features and functions that make it irresistible and effortless.  But what is the design pattern for contagious behavior? How can we for example, invent contagious behaviors for achieving and sustaining health weight loss, managing chronic illness and the like?

Some have offered answers on how to design and seed contagious behavior (e.g. The Tipping Point) but none that have led to reproducible results. Until the design pattern for contagious behaviors is discovered we will have to follow the advice of mothers and effective leaders – hang out with the good kids and surround yourself with talented people.

                  [Source: Idea Sandbox Blog]

Speakers from the leading edge of the Science of Decision Making that provide a clear and compelling explanation of what is going on. Certainly worth listening to in the background as you do other tasks, like work on your cognitive design problems.

A major theme in cognitive design is that we don’t design things to fit how we think-and-feel very well.  The lack of cognitive fit generates some serious problems and creates major innovation opportunities. But sometimes it can be extreme.  

Many of the extreme cases (see above) are caused by the fact that my brain function evolves at a much slower rate than culture does.  The brain of a hunter gatherer does not fit the cognitive task environment of a knowledge worker.  The classic example is the inappropriateness of the fight-or-flight response we experience while disagreeing with our boss over a performance review.

Books, articles and posts that illustrate this extreme lack of cognitive fit abound. Two recent examples (thanks to Gina Farag) are given below.

An article in the New York Times, Yes Looks Do Matter,  on how stereotyping has evolutionary roots:

  ”Eons ago, this capability was of life-and-death importance, and humans developed the ability to gauge other people within seconds.”

And an opinion piece in LiveScience, Losing It: Why Self Control is not Natural, claims lack of self control may have had an evolutionary advantage:

Apparently, it’s human nature to be out of control. Imagine our early ancestors roaming the savannah looking for food. They might bring down a gazelle, but that meat was probably not enough for some of the group. As soon as they wiped their mouths, those lacking self-control were probably off again on the hunt because they could not deny themselves anything. 

Of course many brain functions, the so-called higher brain functions, have evolved specifically for the purpose of adapting to the modern information age. Right? Well it seems even the nobel function of reason has come under the assault from an evolutionary perspective. Take a look at the book Kludge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind as an example.

Flight-or-fight, self control, stereotyping and reasoning are powerful forces in society today.  Yet in many ways, our hardwired approach to these is wildly out of step with the cognitive task demands of today’s culture.  The effects are quite visibile – a tsunami of unwanted behaviors – discrimination, poor health choices, workplace violence.

Our technology-fueled culture will continue to advanced at an accelerate pace. It seems clear the only way our poor old slowly evolving brains will manage is via excellence in cognitive design.

A recent large-scale meta study (study of studies) supports the confirmation bias or the fact that we are more likely than not to attend to information that supports our views rather than conflicts with them.  More specifically:

“The researchers found that people are about twice as likely to select information that supports their own point of view (67 percent) as to consider an opposing idea (33 percent). Certain individuals, those with close-minded personalities, are even more reluctant to expose themselves to differing perspectives, Albarracín said. They will opt for the information that corresponds to their views nearly 75 percent of the time.”

No surprise here for the cognitive designer. Interestingly, they found that people who are more confident in their views or see some value in opposing information (e.g. it will help them prepare to defend their views) are more open to opposing information.  This provides a hint on how we might be able to design experiences to help avoid the corrupting power of the confirmation bias.

Placebos, or the assumption we are receiving a treatment (often a drug) when we are not, can have very real effects and even change behaviors.  Placebos are like “mind medicine” or improvement through belief rather than actual intervention.  As such, they are of great interest to cognitive designers.

That’s why this news item on research into the placebo effect at the University at Buffalo caught my eye:

“Now a recent review of research by University at Buffalo pediatric psychologists suggests that such medication, or the assumption of medication, may produce a placebo effect — not in the children, but in their teachers, parents or other adults who evaluate them.”

Some evidence that the expectation of change can in fact produce change, even in those administering change. The news release explains:

“The act of administering medication, or thinking a child has received medication, may induce positive expectancies in parents and teachers about the effects of that medication, which may, in turn, influence how parents and teachers evaluate and behave toward children with ADHD,” said UB researcher Daniel A. Waschbusch, Ph.D., lead author of the review.

Does this have implications for how we approach organizational change?

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Wow has our view of how minds work changed – even in my lifetime. We have gone from rational calculating machines that carefully consider alternative solutions and seek to maximize economic utility to metaphor-driven, evolutionary kludges of cognitive biases that blink our way through hard problems and seek to maximize our personal mental energy.  

I especially like the emphasis on seeking to maximize personal mental energy.  Mental energy is a fundamental resource so we should be naturally wired to seek objects, relationships and experiences that replenish rather than deplete it.  Fireworks, setting them off or watching a professional delivered display, are great examples. They generate tons of excess mental energy in us.

Watching fireworks triggers meaning, emotion and a wide variety of specific mental states from expectation and surprise to awe.  We anticipate the grand finale, we are pulled into “the now” by powerful sensory effects and we can reminisce and even socialize.  Of course fireworks on the 4th of July are a public expression of our independence as a nation.  The joy of freedom, the pride of accomplishment and the deep psychological power of solidarity release a river of mental energy.

We get this for very little mental effort – all we have to do is look up and watch.  Fireworks are an explosion of mental energy. Millions flock to fireworks displays, like moths to a mental energy flame. 

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