For some first-hand insights into the cognition of cults and deprogramming check out this TED video on how cults rewire the brain. It is about 6 minutes long and contains some graphic images. Deprogramming, now that’s a truly hard cognitive design challenge!
Be Sure to Factor Biases about Cognition into Your Design
As we age our memory gets worse, right? Holding that negative stereotype, or believing others around you hold it, can in fact make your memory worse. Or so reports researchers from North Carolina State University. They report:
“For example, older adults will perform more poorly on a memory test if they are told that older folks do poorly on that particular type of memory test,” Hess says. Memory also suffers if senior citizens believe they are being “stigmatized,” meaning that others are looking down on them because of their age.”
I have seen similar studies even ones that have an impact on where folks score on the dementia scale.
This is an important finding for cognitive designers working on applications for highly educated elderly, especially 70 and up. (more…)
One question I am often asked is, does your approach to cognitive design also include emotion? My answer is empathetically yes! I believe the classic distinction between cognition (i.e. intellectual or rational) and affective (i.e. emotional or irrational) has been shattered.
This is key point for cognitive designers. If we aspire to design for how minds actually work, we must understand the basic interplay between intellectual and emotional processes. Assuming they are separate and distinct, when in fact they are not leads to bad designs.
There is a lot of recent evidence that supports rejecting the long-standing distinction between cognition and affect. For a great overview check out the article (on the Dana Foundation website), Discovering that Rational Economic Man Has a Heart. While you are there, also check out Cerebrum 2009: Emerging Ideas in Brain Science. All the chapters are free online and several promise some useful insights for cognitive designers.
The words we use to explain or create designs have an enormous impact on cognition. This may seem obvious but understanding the details of the impact can help designers select words as carefully as they select other features, functions and forms.
Detailed insight into the cognitive effects of word choice is the subject of the recent article, The Role of Medical Language in Changing Public Perception of Illness. The authors studied the impact of medical versus lay terminology on perceptions (e.g. seriousness) held about the underlying condition.
When asked to review the performance of an employee we are all hit by the fundamental attribution bias. This is a tendency to judge someone based on their personality (the kind of person we think they are) rather than situational analysis (how circumstances compelled their behavior).
Turns out that the strength of the bias is inversely proportional to how well we like the person being evaluated, or so argues Barbara Limanowka, in her capstone research for a Master’s degree in Learning and Organizational Change at Northwestern University. The more we like the person we are evaluating the weaker the bias and vice-versa.
An important insight for cognitive designers tasked with improving the effectiveness of an employee appraisal process.
The February issue of Seed Magazine has five stories of interest to cognitive designers including articles on a statistical theory of mind, using neurofeedback to enhance cognition and the application of behavioral economics to formulating policies to fight poverty. On top of that there are stories on the relationship between design and science and the need to go beyond gut feeling for good decision making.
Unfortunately, you cannot access the material without paying (online or at the newsstand). I will blog on a little longer than usual so you can decide if the issue is worth buying.
Research findings from University of Texas at Austin reported in Science Magazine, suggest that feeling in control (or not) strongly influences how effective we are at a wide range of pattern recognition tasks.
“Participants who lacked control were more likely to perceive a variety of illusory patterns, including seeing images in noise, forming illusory correlations in stock market information, perceiving conspiracies, and developing superstitions.”
The perception of illusory patterns can lead to poor judgements and decisions making. So this finding has implications for designers working on a wide range of cognitive applications from management decision-making and consumer choice to learning and perhaps even the design of new magic tricks!
According to Dr. Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke, and author of the interesting book, Predictably Irrational, the offer of a huge bonus does not improve cognitive performance. He makes his argument in a recent piece in the New York Times, What’s The Value of A Big Bonus?.
In the article he describes several experiments that demonstrate those offered very large bonuses actually do worse on a cognitive task than those offered a medium or even small bonus.
Many have pointed out that money may not motivate those that think for a living. But this research goes further:
Given in the wrong dose (too much) money may worsen our performance on tasks that require learning, thinking, decision-making, creativity and other forms of cognition.
We need to be careful to design compensation and reward systems for how minds actually work, not how we think they should work.
On Swoopo you can bid using a new model called “entertainment shopping” to buy all sorts of items ranging from consumer electronics to household items. Here is how it works:
1. You give them money, at least $20. You buy the right to bid in an auction. It costs $1 to place a bid, win or lose.
2. Find an item you want and place a bid. This increases the price by 15 cents and automatically extends the bid clock by 20 seconds.
There are no reserves. By paying for the right to bid this creates the possibility you can get a super good deal (lottery like effect) and also means you will tend to bid not wanting to loose the investment you made (sunk cost bias).
Entertainment occurs in the last 20 seconds of the auction as you score a “kill” in the bargain hunting game or pump more and more dollars into it trying to win a lottery.
Scientific American has an interesting interview with Neurologist Robert Burton about his new book, On Being Certain: Believing That You’re Right Even When You are Not.
His basic claim is that for every thought conscious or not, there is an automatic and independent assessment of the accuracy of that thought.
“Once we realize that the brain has very powerful inbuilt involuntary mechanisms for assessing unconscious cognitive activity, it is easy to see how it can send into consciousness a message that we know something that we can’t presently recall—the modest tip-of-the-tongue feeling. At the other end of the spectrum would be the profound “feeling of knowing” that accompanies unconsciously held beliefs—a major component of the unshakeable attachment to fundamentalist beliefs—both religious and otherwise—such as belief in UFOs or false memories.”
And this automatic assessment of our own thoughts can feel very good, powerfully so:
“Fortunately, the brain has provided us with a wide variety of subjective feelings of reward ranging from hunches, gut feelings, intuitions, suspicions that we are on the right track to a profound sense of certainty and utter conviction. And yes, these feelings are qualitatively as powerful as those involved in sex and gambling. One need only look at the self-satisfied smugness of a “know it all” to suspect that the feeling of certainty can approach the power of addiction.”
The design implications of this are strong.
