The Streisand Effect

The Streisand effect is a phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet. 

You get more bang for your buck by being banned. More column inches by causing offence. 

It is an example of psychological reactance, wherein once people are aware that some information is being kept from them, their motivation to access and spread it is increased. 

It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose 2003 attempt to suppress photographs of her residence in Malibu, California, inadvertently drew further public attention to it.

Schedules of Reinforcement

1. Fixed ratio.
Buy 4 coffees, get your fifth one free.
In operant conditioning, a fixed-ratio schedule is a schedule of reinforcement where a response is reinforced only after a specified number of responses.

> See earlier post on the Goal Gradient Effect




2. Variable ratio.
Fishing
In operant conditioning, a variable-ratio schedule is a schedule of reinforcement where a response is reinforced after an unpredictable number of responses. This schedule creates a steady, high rate of responding.

 













3. Fixed interval.
Footballer signs contract whereby his salary increases are renegotiated every three years.
In operant conditioning, a fixed-interval schedule is a schedule of reinforcement where the first response is rewarded only after a specified amount of time has elapsed.

4. Variable interval.
Waiting for a taxi.
In operant conditioning, a variable-interval schedule is a schedule of reinforcement where a response is rewarded after an unpredictable amount of time has passed.

SIMPLES

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Properly used, positive reinforcement is extremely powerful ~ B. F. Skinner

Fear Conditioning

One form of learning that plays a prominent role in consumer’s behaviour is fear conditioning.

In Watson and Rayner’s seminal experiment with “Little Albert” (1920), they showed how fear can become a conditioned emotional reaction. Marketers may also be incorporating some of Watson and Rayner’s behavioural theories to influence their consumer’s behaviour.

People often learn by information and instruction which situations to fear (Rachman, 1977). Mowrer (1939) argued that fear “may effectively motivate human beings” and that the curtailment of fear “may serve powerfully to reinforce behaviour that brings about such a state of relief or security”.

Accordingly, companies that market their products often use forms of fear conditioning in an attempt to increase their revenue.

Clearasil, a skin care product for the treatment of acne, ran television advertisements portraying spotty teenagers looking glum and downbeat; but joyful and surrounded by attractive women once the product had been discovered. Similar advertising themes exist with Lynx body spray. The product is advertised as a potent solution for men to acquire more attention from women, a “spray more - get more” mantra of fear conditioning.  

Both advertisements suggest an attempt at fear conditioning to promote their product to possibly insecure adolescent males. The fear can be conditioned by frequent repetition of the association between the new conditioned stimulus and the fear. Therefore, individuals (consumers) are driven to purchase these products in an attempt to avoid negative outcomes and successfully reduce their fear (Rachman, 1977). It can be further argued that avoidance conditioning is employed in these advertisements; as the consumer learns a response (buy product) and thus avoid an aversive stimulus (e.g. not being attractive).

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"...because then you're watching television, you're watching the news, you're being pumped full of fear, there's floods, there's AIDS, there's murder, cut to commercial, buy the Acura, buy the Colgate, if you have bad breath they're not going to talk to you, if you have pimples, the girl's not going to fuck you, and it's just this campaign of fear, and consumption, and that's what I think it's all based on, the whole idea of keep everyone afraid, and they'll consume." ~ Marilyn Manson (Bowling for Columbine, 2002).

Political Persuasion

What does an elected individual do or portray that may benefit them in the run up to polling day? In election campaigns, candidates attempt to promote themselves and try to communicate a positive message to get the support of the deciding voters. Along with expressing their motives if elected, does an understanding of the voter’s mind benefit their campaign strategy? A promotion of this idea could be witnessed in a haunting statement from Adolf Hitler (1933) who remarked in his infamous literature Mein Kampf,

'' … the greater the scope of the message that has to be present, the more necessary it is for the propaganda to discover that plan of action which is psychologically the most efficient''

Political communication and persuasion may have intrigued a tyrant in Nazi Germany,  but how does modern day political messages affect the public? In political elections advertising is regularly used to communicate a candidate's message in the hope of being elected. The public are exposed to images of politicians on campaign posters, campaign buses, leaflets through their letterbox, political broadcasts and televised debates. Whether the individual is walking on the street, driving in their car or sitting in front of the TV, they will likely witness political campaign advertising in some form or another.

 

In what ways does this advertising affect the mind of a voter? In the 2008 US presidential election Barack Obama’s campaign slogan of ''Yes we can'' may have been transformed into a victorious ''Yes we did!'' (Miller, 2009).  The ‘Mere exposure effect’ proposed by Zajonc (1968), says that a repeated exposure to a particular object results in a greater attraction to that object. If this theory is applied to political advertising, you could argue that people who continually witnessed Obama's campaign signs, may have developed a preference for his slogan and thus his party in general.

However, voters are not easily fooled by familiar and attractive faces alone (Mattes et al., 2010). First impressions of a political candidate can also be important. Primacy effects refer to people's tendency to assign more importance to the first information we learn about a person. Research suggests that a candidate who arouses positive feelings in a voter at an early stage, may have a heavy bearing on the day citizens go to the polls. Research from Abakoumkin (2011) highlighted the relationship of primacy effects in the ballot order of candidate's names and election outcomes. According to the author, those candidates listed earlier on a voting list may have had an advantage over those listed afterwards.

Contrary to these primary effects are recency effects, the enhanced memory of recently learned information. Can recency effects have an impact in how they influence vote decision? On October 24th 2011, in the race for the Irish Presidency, allegations were made against front runner Sean Gallagher that he received a €5,000 payment from convicted fuel smuggler Hugh Morgan. An argument could be made that recency effects of the allegations played a role in Mr. Gallagher losing votes and not being elected President. The recency effects coupled with this revelation may have removed feelings of trust and popularity among the Irish electorate.

Popularity and liking is also psychologically important for creating an association with a person. In his book 'Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion', Cialdini (2007) says that people tend to comply with the requests of someone they know and like (p. 167), with other researchers arguing that the likeability of a candidate suggests caring, trust and sociability (Hoegg & Lewis, 2011). Candidates trying to win votes may employ this tactic in order to create a 'one of us' connection. Cialdini also discussed peoples need to reciprocate; a politician who canvasses door to door making promises about what they will do once elected, or what they have done, can leave people in a situation where they feel an act of reciprocation is due (Cialdini, 2007). The political promises are acknowledged and in exchange for a vote, the 'reciprocity rule' lets the person avoid feelings of indebtedness to the other party.

Another method of creating an association with voters is in the linking of celebrities to political parties (Cialdini, 2007). Name dropping to associate yourself with desirable individuals and therefore improve other people's impressions of you, is referred to as BIRGing, 'Basking in Reflected Glory' (Cialdini et al., 1976).

An early example of this was portrayed in an overt media act instigated by Edward Bernays,  a pioneer in public relations. In 1924, the media had portrayed US President Calvin Coolidge as a dull, humanless figure who was viewed as a national joke. President Coolidge contacted Bernays for help in boosting his popularity with the masses. Bernays organised 34 film stars to visit the White House, and in this act of combining public relations with politics, the morning newspapers contained front page articles that increased the President's ratings among the public (Curtis, 2002).

A more recent example demonstrated in 2001, showed Tony Blair inviting celebrities to 10 Downing Street in an attempt to "add some spice" to the Labour Party. Political tactics like 'BIRGing' may sway the undecided votes, by creating a positive mental schema of the politician and thus reducing initial cognitive dissonance.

Basking in reflected glory may have helped President Coolidge boost his self enhancement in 1924, but in the modern era of elections, social media sites can act as a new communication tool for politicians (Vitak et al., 2011). With the younger generation of today being the future voters, politicians may need to increase political interest through relevant mediums. The internet provides people with more information in elections than that of traditional media. Facebook and MySpace were extremely popular among younger voters in the 2008 US Presidential race (Vitak et al., 2011). These social media sites allow politicians to interact with younger voters who may not have been previously interested in politics. Facebook users could post comments, share videos, express thoughts, become a "fan" of a candidate, and connect with other users in ways that previous elections did not offer (Vitak et al., 2011). Thus, from the use of social media sites, the peer to peer interactions among younger users can benefit a politician to convey their message to a broader audience.

An additional attraction of online political communication is how cost effective it can be. Research by Hoegg & Lewis (2011) states, ''A huge determinant of the success of a political campaign is the money spent on it'' (p. 898). It is therefore beneficial to the candidate to engage in powerful online mediums that save on expenditure and are less resource intensive, with any surplus expenditure being directed elsewhere. However, online activities may also have negative implications for political candidates. With the popularity of mobile phones, a member of the public standing in a campaign crowd can record a candidates "gaffe" and immediately post it online for millions to view (Johnson & Perlmutter, 2011). Mistakes can be highlighted and damage political reputations, where in previous decades an unfortunate incident may have gone unnoticed and be quickly forgotten.

The effective use of internet mediums has also been questioned by Morozov (2009). The author regarded the users of online resources for political interaction as ''slacktivists'', where participants were merely engaging in feel-good online activism that has little or zero real world impact. Online participants in chat forums who attempt to generate publicity for a particular candidate, is an ideal form of activism for a ''lazy generation'' and are not interested in following through on their morals (Morozov, 2009).

Political elections continue to be a prominent topic in news and general discussion. With the development of new trends in an internet era, politicians are faced with new challenges in exhausting all possible resources to create the most accessible campaign message. There are a myriad of psychological influences present in political campaigns. The psychological motives of a politician's actions are not always the most obvious from a voter's perspective, but for the candidate they may be a decisive factor in securing the position sought after.

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"People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive."  
                                                                                                                                                - Blaise Pascal, De l'art de persuader

Tomorrows Success comes from Today's Practice

What makes an expert?

With the Open in Muirfield about to begin, no doubt it will create the usual ripple of golfers hitting the driving ranges and courses in the attempts of tweaking their game. Most people probably wonder how much effort it takes to become a professional golfer, or even just a scratch player at that.

 

Is it genetics or 'innate' talent? Does it derive from general intelligence? Does practice play a role? Well a vital aspect that marks a real expert is that of deliberate practice (Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996). This practice is usually goal directed, requires real cognitive effort and is highly structured. Further, it also requires motivation, continual self-evaluation, and retention of control (Rossano, 2003). Sounds like a bundle of fun...

Experts are not better problem solvers in general, but simply in their own domain. Their knowledge is more extensive and they are better organised. Their performances are more fluent, accurate and automatic than those performances of a novice. Williams (2001) remarked that experts in sports do not have faster reaction times or superior visual abilities, but instead appear to have all round better strategies to the sport they are involved in. For example, in sports like tennis, an expert player does not tend to look at the ball but instead uses cues to anticipate movement (Bradford, 2000).

 

Skill acquisition for experts involves a conversion of knowledge from the declarative (the acquisition of relevant factual knowledge) into the procedural. This results in automaticity for the expert which frees up working memory. Novices tend to focus too much on positive feedback (''good job''), because hearing they're doing well helps them stay committed. However, experts tend to focus on negative feedback (''You’re doing that incorrectly'') because they're interested in progress. Automaticity is also supported by Smith and Chamberlin's research in 1992. They showed that a cognitively demanding task interfered a lot with a novice footballer but not with the experts greater automaticity of skill.


Moran (2005) delineated the five main differences that separate an expert from a novice;

1)Experts have more domain specific knowledge.

2)Experts spend more time in the initial stages of a problem.

3)Experts have a better representation of meaningful patterns.

4)Experts have better memory for their domain.

5)Experts automatic processes allow for greater speed and efficiency.

 

Another often quoted idea a lot of people may buy into is the 'Ten year rule'. First identified by the psychologist John Hayes in 1989 and soon endorsed by other psychologists, the rule states that a person must persevere with learning and practising a craft or discipline for about 10 years before he or she can make a breakthrough.

Hayes studied the role of the preparation stage in creative production. He examined career development in several fields requiring creative thinking such as musical composition, painting, and poetry. He found that even the most 'talented' individuals required many years of preparation before they reached master-level performance in their work.

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell discussed that people who rose  above the rest and achieved incredible success in their respective endeavours all have one thing in common: they spent at least 10,000 hours learning and internalizing and perfecting their crafts (approximately 10 years) of deliberate practice. This translates as slightly more than three hours of practice daily for ten years (Salmela, 1998). The 10,000-hour theory was originally formulated by Dr. K. Anders Ericsson, professor of psychology at Florida State University (1993). But deliberate practice is a specifically defined term. It involves goal setting, responsive feedback, and endless drills to improve skills with an eye on mastery. It is not ''just showing up'' and beating a few ball down a fairway. And, plain and simple, it’s not fun.  

Does talent (nature) + 10,000 hours of work (nurture) = Success? Or what about just 10,000 hours of work equalling success? Both methods don't really guarantee anything. If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster! So the idea of the 10,000-hour rule sounds a little ridiculous. It does an injustice to those who are naturally gifted. But it also does a tremendous disservice to the naturally ungifted. It also raises hopes to an unrealistic level. All the hard work in the world won’t overcome a brain-based deficit or the fact that the best wood in your golf bag has, and always will be, your pencil.

 

Many people don’t like the 10k rule because they think it encourages early specialisation which encourages drop out later. If I decided to put in 10,000 hours of deliberate practice in golf, it may get me to being ''really good'' but not ''golfing genius''. But talking about how "you either got it or don't" is a good way to dissuade people from trying, or at least only trying a little and giving up, having come to the conclusion that they don't have the innate talent. 

 

The bottom line is, I think people know that true geniuses are few and far between and that the bell curve means that most of us are going to be "average" at most things. But that doesn't mean that without some hard work you cannot get to "satisfyingly above average". And frankly there's nothing wrong with that!

The Dalai Lama once remarked, ''No matter what activity or practice we are pursuing, there isn't anything that isn't made easier through constant familiarity and training. Through training, we can change; we can transform ourselves'' (1998). Ok, he may have been talking about Buddhism but it holds the same weight in all walks of life.

Support for the 10-year rule may be found in the expertise (or eminence) hypothesis presented by Piirto (2004), that ''every field and domain of knowledge in which creativity can be demonstrated has novice levels, apprenticeship levels, expert levels, and special jargons''.

According to Chase and Simon (1973b), no one can become an international chess master without devoting themselves to at least one decade of intensive practice to develop ''chess playing excellence''.

The 10-year rule is also bolstered by the work of Csikszentmihalyi (1996), specifically regarding the 'incubation' phase of creativity. He argues that it is impossible ''for a person who has not mastered a domain or been involved in a field'' to take full advantage of the incubation phase. He implies that a certain amount of the patterns, knowledge and rules of a field like physics must be 'internalized' before deeper incubation can occur or creative, scientific breakthroughs be made. In other words, a discoverer must be familiar with a discipline for deeper creative solutions to emerge. But hey, I'm familiar with golf! Where the hell is my moment of clarity?

''Knowledge is not skill. Knowledge plus ten thousand times is skill'' (Shinichi Suzuki, inventor of the international Suzuki method of music education).

It’s obvious that 10,000 hours or any amount of BAD practice will get you nowhere. The crux to understanding the value of the 10,000 hour research is this: During 10,000 hours of ORDINARY practice you will probably achieve enough DEEP PRACTICE to reach mastery. 10,000 is just a typical number of hours it takes to get enough HIGH QUALITY practice. If you were to work at high quality, deep practice continually, the number would probably be a lot less, maybe as low as 1000 hours.

 

Here's an example of one person who is putting the 10k theory to the test. It's a pretty interesting journey this man is taking.  10,000 hours of practice (6 hours a day, 6 days a week for 6 years) starting from the hole backwards, working his way to become a "professional" golfer.   Obviously to all of us this is an absolute dream, as he mentions many times on his site, but just the experiment part of it is pretty impressive too. 

''Just taaaaap it in''

Dan McLaughlin, a 30-year-old professional photographer from Oregon, decided to put the theory to the test, and committed himself to 10,000 hours of mastering golf — to the point of hoping to become a PGA golf champ. McLaughlin, who never picked up a golf club in his life, calls his endeavour ''The Dan Plan.'' Check it out here

Noteworthy to mention is that he never says 'I think I'll be a PGA tour pro after 10,000 hours'. Dan remarked, ''I want to test the 10,000 theory and see where it takes me. I chose golf because I had zero experience, so it seemed like the perfect test.''

The delusion that 10,000 hours of practice is the only thing that is different between us and those teeing up at Muirfield or anywhere, bothers a lot of people. Many people may do something for 10,000 hours, such as driving a car over the course of a lifetime, but never get anywhere near expert level, such as Formula One. Most will probably plateau and some may even get worse.

 

So, again, how long would it take to reach the 10,000-hour threshold? If you were to spend an average of 40 hours a week working on a chosen pursuit, that's at least 2,000 hours a year. So it would take about five years to become 'a leader in the field'. For those that start their pursuit as children have a head start and an advantage - plenty of time to get those 10,000 hours in.  So McLaughlin’s experiment could be instructive, and hopeful for many, as he started his pursuit a little later in life. I for one will be interested in seeing how he progresses.

 

What have you done today that has taken you one step closer to your goal? Is it really a goal or is it just a dream?

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''Practice makes the master'' ~ Patrick Rotfuss, The Name of the Wind

 

Black Gold

For those people like myself that have pretty much an 'addiction' to caffeine, the reward cards you get in places like Starbucks and Costa coffee help fuel your need to want more.


Say for example you have the following two scenarios:



Scenario A, Card 1
You buy a coffee and are given a reward card with 10 spaces for stamps but none are already stamped


Scenario B, Card 2
You buy a coffee and are given a reward card with 12 spaces for stamps but 2 of them have already being stamped


You are more likely to get Card 2 filled up before Card 1.


This is down to what is called the 'Goal Gradient Effect'; that you will accelerate your behaviour as you progress closer to your goal. The 'shorter' the distance to the goal, the more motivated people become to reach it. Even though you still have 10 places to fill on both cards, with Card 2 you feel that you have already started something that you now wish to finish.

However, motivation and purchases plummet right after the goal is reached when you enter the post-reward resetting stage. If there is any second reward level, you will not initially be very motivated to reach that second reward.

For the coffee shop owner, they are most at risk of losing you as an immediate customer right after a 'reward' has been reached.


- I would drink tea but I don't know the recipe...
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Order coffee, the guy behind the counter goes, "You want the 32-ounce or the large?" Geez, how big is that large? "You'll wanna pull your car around back. I'll start the pump". That's a lot of fucking coffee, I don't know if I want to be awake that long in Tennessee.
                                                                                                                                                                    ~ Bill Hicks

Where do I begin?

'A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step'
                                                                                         
                                                                                         ~ Lao Tzu