visualizing the understanding of relationships

Reading the basics of attribution theory underlines the necessity of this research. It turns out that:

… as Fritz Heider says: “our perceptions of causality are often distorted by our needs and certain cogintive biases”… (wiki, Forsyth Donelson: Social psychology, 1987, Brooks/Cole publishing)

This reflects another quote, criticizing the phases of the transtheoretical model:

… “the model ‘assumes that individuals typically make coherent and stable plans,’ when in fact they are not” . (wiki, R. West: Time for a change – putting the transtheoretical model to a rest)

Amen.

According to Ajzen & Fishbein (Fishbein, M. and I. Ajzen (1981), “Acceptance, yielding, and impact: Cognitive processes in persuasion,” Cognitive processes in persuasion, R. E. Petty, T. M. Ostrom, and T. C. Brock; Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 339-359.:

… “different arguments have to be constructed for changing a belief or conclusion, an attitude, and an intention or behavior” …

Exactly why a multidimensional approach stays preferable instead a focus on just one or two. Humans are good in finding or creating arguments. We just need (some help) to learn and recognize which dimensions these arguments apply to. And whether we use the right amount of dimensions.

On an individual level, I did find one approach that might help shed some light: theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, I. , 1991, The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179-211).
The theory of planned behavior offers a model where behavioral, normative and control beliefs influence respectively a persons (1) attitude toward behavior, (2) subjective norm and (3) percieved behavioral control. Together this guides a persons intentions, which steers the behavior.

·source and explanation (image: copyright 2002 Icek Aizen)

 

…perceived behavioral control refer’s to people’s perception of the ease or difficulty of performing the behavior of interest. … perceived behavioral control can, and usually does, vary across situations and actions.

Again, so far no hard link to group behavior (or other external drivers, which is common in behavioral change theories). Although all boxes originate from an individual, cognitive self regulation point of view, there is no reason to neglect the fact that they can also act as interpersonal drivers within group behavior. To help make some constructive noise and help surface intentions an loyalty. According to Aizen, all intervision should target the beliefs, and through adjusted intention it will change behavior.

How long will it take before we can map the use of not only computer memory, but also our (working) storage / memory parts of our brains? That way we could be optimizing not only abstract algorithms, but also optimize our complex interactions, thoughts and what not.

…and true, we are not machines. Or are we, deep down inside?

Without it, we couldn’t enjoy watching a Margitte. Whether we can solve that puzzele from a theory of mind perspective or a philosophy of mind perspective, I don’t know…

In 1999 Prof. dr. Theo Poiesz published a book called ‘Gedragsmanagement’ (behavioral management), explaining the triade model. A model based on his research on Human Movement Sciences.

Poiesz uses a factorization of Motivation, Ability and Opportunity (Dutch: motivatie, capaciteit, gelegenheid) as guidance towards targetted behavior. The model offers a simple system for the explanation, influence and prediction of behavior. It is up to the user of the model, which behavior is targetted. The model suggests three necessary causes of the targetted behavior:

• Motivation: the degree of a persons interest in (the result of) this behavior
• Ability: the degree of a persons skills, capacity, experience and instruments to show this behavior
• Opportunity: the degree to which time and circumstances stimulate or obstruct this behavior

Using a factorization (T) means that when one of the factors is significantly lower than the others, it will bring down the total result: T = M * A * O.

source: the book (dutch)

Poiesz makes a distinction between intrinsic elements (belonging naturally, essential) and extrinsic elements (coming or operating from outside) of each factor, for example:

	intrinsic	extrinsic
motivation	interest, satisfaction	encouragement, appreciation	M
ability	fitness, natural ability, self assurance	quality of material {knowledge}	A
opportunity	reserved personal planning, time & place	facities, external conditions	O
			TOTAL

All factors need to be concerned at all times: i.e. when a person cannot find the time to act (unreachable O), he could decide to give up (lowering M). And by just informing (raise A) & facilitating (raise O), Motivation is not necessarrilly activated.
Note that a high intrinsic motivation can over rule a low extrinsic motivation. And vice versa.

Poiesz states subjects to score themselves. His approach is an individual one. Mine is targetted towards group behavior.

Therefore my preliminary hypothesis is: When groupmembers use the triade model to score not only themselves, but also the other group members, expressing these assumptions -with a visual reference- will help them overcome differences in complex situations.

The question is, how to visualize models like TriadeModel (like antother model in this prototype), in order to change behavior or change an attitude (opening up attitudes and lowering assumptions) AND help maintain such a change. Perhaps it’s easier to open up when using the triadmodel to ‘judge’ the behavior of each others organisation instead, avoiding intimacy barriers.

What if we could train subjects to actively use just one specific type of model? A model which allows direct feedback. Perhaps the Rose of Leary (adapted and simplified from the 1956 publication). I sometimes draw ‘the Rose’ -for myself- in a meeting, when I get the feeling I can’t connect with a person. I then helps to map his/her behavior (compliant vs blocking and superior vs inferior), because this way I can recognize my own automatic behavior and exchange this for the most optimal behavioral style.
Of course, when going even deeper into this rabibit hole, we can also assume that every behavior can be a unaware trick or a deliberate tactic (stages of competence, Motivation and personality, 1954, Maslow). Especially when taking the traid of Poiesz into account at the same time!

It seems we have a multi-dimensional problem. Let us count which dimensions we have so far:

1. Intrinsic and extrinsic behavior, labelled with factors of motivation, ability and opportunity (Theo Poiesz)
2. Compliant vs blocking and superior vs inferior attitude (Timothy Leary)
3. Stages of competence: (un)consious and (in)competence (Abraham Maslow)

Complementary states like being deceiving or constructive & vulnerable or strong seem to frolic through these dimensions. And let us not forget differentiation over place, time and decision making unit (example).

When looking for a way to lower the energy drain in complex situations, we must conclude that multidimensional indivual behavior somehow is setting the stage for emergent group behavior. Within that group lure new -inertia driven- challenges, like flocking members or convergence towards the first solution. Nevertheless, we cannot neglect the possible origins of these new challenges: the underlying individual dimensions.

Surprisingly the tension of loyalty to both oneself, to the group and to the organizational backbone does not appear in literature about group behavior.

Loyalty sure is explored (1) by Hirschmann (‘exit or voice’) and (2) in public good games and consumer/brand behavior, although such research is mostly individually orriented and focussing on physical outcome (win/lose) instead of intertwined soft skills.
So far I did not find a direct connection in literature between the dimensions stated above (behavior, attitude, stages, states) and group behavior. 

This is a field for further exploration. Perhaps by making these levels of loyalty explicit within the group, in a way that a constructive dialogue emerges, with a shared perspective of just the right dimensions needed in exactly that moment…

In this slidedeck Prof. Aizen explains the basics of attitude formation. A nice introduction to enlarge my vocabulary concerning group behavior. He kicks off with three approaches:

• Information-processing approach:  Attitudes based on information about the attitude object.  Expectancy-value model / Persuasive communication.
• Behavior-theory approach:  Association of attitude object with affect / evaluation.
• Dynamic approach:  Attitudes emerge as part of a dynamic interplay of forces.

After an example of classical conditioning of evaluation, genaralization and affect and an example of sublimal conditioning Aizen continues with a Dynamic approach, stating 4 attitude functions (Katz 1960):

1. Ego-defensive function:  Protect self-esteem. (E.g., A need to confirm one’s own masculinity or femininity may lead to a negative attitude toward homosexuals.)
2. Value-expressive function: Express important values. (E.g., A person who places high value on protection of the environment may adopt a positive attitude toward solar power.)
3. Knowledge function: Understand people and events. (E.g., A desire to explain why Moslems engage in terrorist activities can produce a negative attitude toward Islam.)
4. Instrumental function: Obtain rewards and avoid punishments. (E.g., A desire to obtain promotions, salary increases, and other benefits may lead an employee to adopt the political and social attitudes prevalent in an organization.)

Aizen continues outlining a number of attitude ralated theories:

• Psychological reactance theory (Brehm 1966): “thou shall not eat a cookie…”
• Rationalization (Allport, 1954): “the dutch are cheap, always splitting up their restaurant bills”
• Downward comparision theory (Wills, 1981): “I’ve lost a lot of money, luckily I’m not homeless like him”
• Post hypnotic suggestion (Rosenberg, 1956): “When I click my fingers, you wake up and you don’t care anymore”

Aizen descibes Heider’s balance theory (1958):

my friend’s friend is my friend
my friend’s enemy is my enemy
my enemy’s friend is my enemy
my enemy’s enemy is my friend

More about this theory here. And the source of this image of Heiders POX diagram:

What surprises me is the assumption of ‘you are either with me or against me’. There are no weak ties taken into account, let alone a neutral position.
Let’s continue with Aizens slides.

• Resolution of incongruity; ‘law of inverse polarization’: “I hate this now as much as I loved it before”
• Logical consistancy model (McGuire, 1960): “Smoking is bad. I a bar you are forced to smoke. Smoking in bars must be made illegal”
• Cognitive dissonance (CD) (Festinger 1956): “In 2012 we’re all gonna die. …oh, I can explain…”
  • Conditions for disconfirmation strengthen belief
  • Tactics reducing CD: denying dissonant elements, reducing the importance (weight) of dissonant elements, increasing the importance (weight) of consonant elements, adding new  consonant elements
  • Factors enhancing dissonance due to counter-attitudinal behavior: responsibility for the unpleasant consequences of the behavior, concern over looking bad in front of others, threat to self esteem, [?] Bem’s self perception argument
• Post decision dissonance (Brehm, 1956)
• The Monty Hall problem

Aizen concludes with advise when persuading others:

• Get people to publicly advocate a position with which they disagree.
• Get people to commit themselves to a course of action that implies the attitude you are interested in.
• Confront people with their hypocrisy, i.e., show them that they don’t act in accordance with their own attitudes or values.

These three pieces of advise call for action, … supported by visualization!

This paper by Histe & Skartveit (2003) discusses an interactive learning environment. The setting -one hot water resource to be distributed to two showering persons- is sublime. This example uses visualization -of both model structure and behavior- as one of the possible tools that can be used when dealing with complex systems.

Although focussing on a better individual understanding of a complex system, and using a closed sytem, this example raises an idea: use visualization to find stable areas, a set of stable states or characteristic conditions that support decision making.
Suppose we have 3 first graders, one is smart, one is strong and one is funny. Neither of them understands the system, and this lack of control is not a necessity for success. Ask yourself: does a bird need to know about the bernoulli principle in order to fly?
Changing tactics -and reserving place and time for changing tactics- can lead to success as well.

Another aspect -the development of a shared understanding of the system or topic- is discussed. This phenomena is also known as grounding: 

Grounding is the process by which participants in collaborative learning construct and maintain some degree of mutual understanding (Baker, Hansen, Joiner, & Traum, 1999). Common ground does not necessarily refer to the internal knowledge that the participants have in common, but to something that is actively negotiated and renegotiated during the communication process (Arnseth & Solheim, 2002).
… {and beware} …
When interaction is analyzed as a goal-oriented process of establishing common ground, researchers may ignore the ambiguities and dynamics of everyday conversation and collaboration (Koschmann & LeBaron, 2003).

Viste and Skartveit suggest to improve the grounding proces “by a tool that enriches linguistic utterances”: visualization.

Comparing third party intervention to visualization, a number of criteria or requirements of the intended visualization come to the surface. We start from McGrath & Kravitz (Group Research, Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 33: 195-230, Volume publication date February 1982) wo use McGrath’s Task Circumplex (see also this post), and zoom into  the segment of Interest conflict tasks, aka Mixed-motive tasks. 

a) research on bargaining an negotiation – within this area 6 categories are mentioned: (1) work on organizational differences such as gender, orientation along a cooperative-competitive dimension and personality; (2) on aspects of the bargaining situation such as payoffs and the availability of alternatives; (3) the effects of social relationship with the opponent {gap in literature}; (4) on dealing with significant third parties

Rubin (1980) presents a summary of research on third party intervention, organized around three themes:

(a) third parties help concession making without loss of fase {a characteristic shared with visualizations, see Eppler 2011}”;

(b) traditional intervention techniques work under low conflict, but may backfire under high conflict conditions {interactive visualization techniques cannot be called traditional. How do visual interventions stand out in a situation of strong conflict?};

(c) third party intervention is often an unwanted intrusion, and the parties will settle to prevent it if they can {so, exactly how can visualization enable from within? It should be simple/low-thresshold and thereby self-enabling/self-reflecting}.

; (5) effects of situational factors and (6) bargaining strategies and tactics.

b) research on dilemmas – on prisonner’s dilemma, related 2-person games, N-person dilemma games {and perhaps also iterative dilemma games}, social traps and public goods games {see also this post}.

c) research on coalition formation – concentration on process or outcome, on indices for evaluating the fit of a coalition, on a range of conditions (minimum power theory, minimum resources theory, bargaining theory, weighted probability theory, and equal excess theory), on factors affecting coalitions in veto games, and more: the use of formal mathematical models and decision theory, of multivalued games, of compared effects of different sources of power.
Concluding that research suggests there is no ‘one true theory’, and underlines the importance of pinning down the range of conditions.

All of the above is labeled ‘groups as task performance systems’. On order for a complete perspective on the McGrath publication, a short summary of another label: ‘groups as systems for structuring social interaction’.

i) patterning of interaction: the communication process – about morphology (patterns of participation among members and over time, i.e. self monitoring and cognitive load); nonverbal aspects of interaction patterning (cues i.e. eye contact, ‘proxemic’ variables); pattern and strategies in verbal communication (i.e. style differences)

ii) content of interpersonal interaction: the acquaintance process – about studies of interpersonal attraction; intimacy, reciprocity and self disclosure; privacy and social penetration

iii) outcomes of interaction: the influence proces – about allocation of rewards; influences on members’ attitudes and behavior; effects of group interaction on attitudes toward the group (ingroup bias); long run relations among members.

No greed no glory, according to the study of Helbing and Roca. Their decision model shows a ‘world’ of greediness, a model promoting cooperation in social dilemma situations, despite very low information requirements while minimizing the influence of imitation, a shadow of the future, reputation effects, signaling, or punishment.

 Source

Some interesting quotes:

We find that moderate greediness favors social cohesion by a coevolution between cooperation and spatial organization, additionally showing that those cooperation-enforcing levels of greediness can be evolutionarily selected.

An open translation from a business developers point of view: shaking new hands is necessary and it benefits your orginization when developing within different cooperations at the same time even without ‘shadow of the future’ and ‘reputation effects’.

Note that the initial appearance of cooperation is possible only because of the presence of noise in the decision rule.

Again from a business developers point of view: make some noise.

In comparison, a model society of individuals with low levels of
greediness is unable to realize social benefits. It lacks the drive to
develop effective cooperation and agglomeration, because non-
greedy individuals become easily satisfied with whatever payoffs
they obtain and thus, maintain their strategy and position. In
consequence, neither cooperation nor agglomeration emerges in
such a society. On the contrary, moderate greediness causes
individuals’ dissatisfaction, making them explore other strategies
and/or positions and experience the benefits of being cooperative
in a cooperative neighborhood. As long as those benefits are
sufficient to satisfy individuals’ aspirations, cooperation and ag-
glomeration coevolve and create a stable population with a high
level of cohesion.

Suppose you are a sponsor, business developer or an administrative employee of an NGO, how should you best define greediness, in a positive way for each role? Perhaps in terms of number of reached refugees, growing turnover, number of projects.

Another interesting insight … is that challenging PublicGoodsGames with very low synergy factors … create a stable society, but one that is locked in noncooperative behavior. Defection is, in this case, the only behavior that is compatible with the aspirations of individuals, regardless of their level of greediness.

Ignorance is bliss.

Our results strongly suggest that learning rules, particularly self-referential factors in decision making, can be a key component in the explanation of the emergence and stability of cooperation and agglomeration in human societies.

Individual awareness of spacial (green beard) or temporal (reputation) ‘hotspots’ however seem to make our lives more complex. 

So knowing this, what would this mean for the ‘battle of universities’ in the Netherlands? The 3 Universities of Technology have been setting up a collaborative program (examples). Recently the Delft University of Technology (DUT) is also aligning with both the Leiden University and the Erasmus University Rotterdam.
It seems in this case there’s no thresshold to the minimal level of ‘greediness’: the need for lowering costs, balancing out curricula and raising funds. Most recent driver is the necessity of being better visible to the growing market, for instance foreign students (using the Shanghai ranking). This is the hand of ‘the shadow of the future’ (Axelrod 1984): ‘we need to cooperate or else…’.
It would be practical for both strategies (3TU & Delft+Leiden+Rotterdam) when Delft would start sharing it’s tactics because of the conflicting interests in both strategies. Assuming these strategies are not conflicting in near future outcome (at least one established cooperation to survive), at the least they are conflicting because of an indisputable, short term energy drain.
Then again, why give all (in this case both) your cards away?

The study of Helbing and Roca assumes lot’s of possible trade-opportunities, whereas the example of the DUT shows no more than 2 main roadmaps, each summed up by 3 partners. One strategy is based on geographical closeness, the other on similarity in domain.
When not only regarding decision makers, but also lobbyists, employees, media and students, we do have a big number of trade opportunities. This is an analogy where trade opportunites are merely the different perspectives and ‘greedy’ outcomes of individuals and smaller groups.
Here we have a relatively large synergy factor (r) and recentlty (juli and august 2011) a high social instability. Perhaps not from Universities points of view, but indeed from individual perspectives.

Why is my mind wandering off, thinking about Monty Pythons ‘You are all individuals!… …Yes, we are all individuals’?

Inspired after watching the TED presentation by Brene Brown, …

… I have to add a comment to a previous post ‘handling intentions‘:

When people are in meetings, there’s a number of activities they seem to prefer:

1. … Hiding some intentions, making personal notes or for reporting to the ‘organisational backbone’;
2. … Sharing some intentions…

Assuming people are (un)intentionally hiding part of their notes, what exactly drives them? How usefull is this behavior? Can we express this shielding behavior in terms of vulnerability? Would this perspective of vulnerability explain the behavior on personal level, what does that mean for group behavior?

Exactly how can visualization make us embrace vulnerability, (re)opening and supporting discourse?

Let’s go back and quote Brown about blame in political context:

…You know how blame is described in the research?
…A way to discharge pain and discomfort.

There is a risk that visualization could reinforce unwanted behavior as well. For instance by reinforcing blame. In order to know how to prevent this, we must learn more about types of behavior: fixed action pattern, habituation & operant conditioning.

watch source movieclip

These types can help us create a steering wheel when dealing with vulnerability.

The creative applications network features an inspiring article about visualizing complex information: the psychoeconomic war room table. Why is this relevant to this research? Let us go along, setting aside the kitchen table, a crisis location and the NASA command center, and let us take a closer look at some of the images of war rooms (I’ve boldly copied and insered below) which helps me make a statement about handling intentions.

A war room table inserted the lower right, resembles todays “precede-and-decide” meeting conditions. A large table, seated participants and -if lucky- a big screen or whiteboard. The lower left insert resembles a battle emulator, with simular functionalities like the old school simulator below.

Biggest differences to me? The number of people involved, the type of intentions (tactical vs strategic, field vs policy), the ways of neighbour interaction, feedback, simple rules (i.e. traces/ tracks). I wonder which setting will be better in supporting constructive conflict as opposed to destructive conflict.
Regarding these types of conflict, the Dutch documentary ‘sta me bij’, shows a 60 minute example about cooperation (and mutual trust) as a driver versus ego (and personal responsibility) as a driver.

Let’s also take a look at the next image, a screenshot of a computer game called Civilization.

Why is this relevant? Because it helps us recognise some key-characteristics valuable to ‘visualizing the understanding of decision making’:

• The game seems to remove Ego’s out of the equation, using metaphores instead of persones to compete with. 
• The game seems to be both disarming and motivational at the same time. 
• It seems to be able to force issues at hand. 
• The game is a multiplayer game, offering shared perspective besides a / parallel to a personal view.

Such characteristics are helpful if we want to perform better in an envisioned world with an interdisciplinary approach, an ‘interstakeholder’ approach, a federal approach, a transgressing approach, a heritable approach when solving complex matters.

When people are in meetings, there’s a number of activities they seem to prefer:

1. … Hiding some intentions, making personal notes or for reporting to the ‘organisational backbone’; 
2. … Sharing some intentions, by dialogue or storytelling or using flipovers or other media; 
3. … Overthinking or evolving some intentions, by scribbling and intimate drawings; and 
4. … Saving, re-opening, re-reading and re-writing some intentions…

Feel free to try and recognize these activities next time you’re in a meeting.

A final thought. When comparing cooperation and competition, it occured to me that (1) ants have no ego’s, (2) ants are tollerant to their own, (3) ants use temporal cooperation, especially when competing. Check out this small ant defending his bigger friend and their food (source).

Who needs a war room? As Steven Berlin Johnson suggests in his book Emergence: Emergence can occur when there is neighbour interaction, pattern recognition, feedback, and indirect control. Don’t have a copy? Not to worry, the book is explained at this post.
So, inspired by the writers of a new book called ‘Vision in Design’: 

Accept complexity, go straight through it – no work around – and reduce into helpful interactions. Take your responsibility as a designer.