Psst! This is the blog of Moira Burke, a Ph.D. student in the HCI Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Rife with derivative pop culture blather, this site occasionally features thoughts on social psychology, usability, aesthetics, and the general meanderings of someone figuring out the meaning of life. Won't you help me find it?
Frank Oppenheimer (Robert's little brother) was a creative and charming pacifist. So charming, in fact, he was even beloved by his FBI tail (assigned because of his membership in the Communist party for their racial integration campaigns). Oppenheimer believed that students should be able to do fundamental lab experiments at any time, so created a library of permanent experiment stations which eventually morphed into the Exploratorium. He was also known for integrating art and science (or maybe was just trying to convince his artist friends to help construct the museum): "Artists and scientists are the official 'noticers' of society. They notice things that other people either have never learned to see or have learned to ignore, and communicate those 'noticings' to others." Oppenheimer and Richard Feynman were good friends, and a quote often attributed to Feynman was more broadly stated by Oppenheimer: "Understanding is a lot like sex: It has a practical purpose but that's not why people do it."
Social network activity and social well-being
Just submitted the final version of this paper: Burke, M., Marlow, C., & Lento, T. (To appear). Social network activity and social well-being. ACM CHI 2010: Conference on human factors in computing. PDF It's the product of another fantabulous summer with the Facebook Data Scientists. This time we surveyed about 1200 English-speaking Facebook users, asking them validated social psych scales measuring social capital and loneliness (e.g. "I come in contact with new people all the time" or "There are several people I trust to help solve my problems".) We paired their self-reports with communication activity on the site. The work is based on the numerous studies that Nicole Ellison, Cliff Lampe, and Chip Steinfeld have done at MSU, connecting self-reports of Facebook use with social capital. Since we had granular activity data on server logs, we extended their work to look at different kinds of communication, particularly (1) directed communication (e.g., interacting with individual friends / sending messages / writing on each other's walls), and (2) passive consumption (e.g., reading stories about friends in the newsfeed). Turns out directed communication acts as expected (people who have strong relationships tend to communicate heavily with individual friends), but passive consumption is associated with greater feelings of loneliness. Since it's a cross-sectional study, we can't tell if clicking on feed stories makes people feel lonely, or lonely people tend to click on more feed stories, but we'll be able to tease out causation in future waves of the study. We also validated the Facebook Intensity Scale; people are great at self-reporting their number of FB friends (duh) and pretty good at reporting time on the site. But attitudinal questions about their engagement with the site don't correlate to any measurable activities (like content production, repeat visits in a month, etc.)
Electric cars: Battery caching, navel gazing, and community building
CMU robotics prof Illah Nourbakhsh unveiled ChargeCar today, a project to redesign electric cars for urban commutes. He prefaced it by recounting all the times he's been in his own electric car, a RAV4EV, driving 70mph by the airport when he'd hear an NPR interview lamenting that electric cars just aren't able to go highway speeds or be dependable for long trips. He's also never visited a mechanic; no scheduled maintenance because the system is so much simpler, and regenerative braking means the motor does most of the work, rather than the brake pads. In eight years, he's only replaced the tires. (Though he can't pass PA emissions testing: You need a tailpipe.) ChargeCar is based on the idea that hilly, stop-and-go, traffic- and coffee-detour-ridden urban commute is ideal for electric motors (and sucky for gas ones), but not for electric batteries. Batteries can't handle the constant changes, and have trouble regulating thermal processes when they're under heavy load. So, he treats them like a database and adds a caching layer: a low-voltage supercapacitor, which changes current direction easily but has lower energy density. Then he tries to hit the capacitor rather than the battery whenever possibly (charging when braking, and discharging to accelerate). Okay, so battery caching is awesome. But the project also focuses on harnessing the power of communities: Communities of commuters submit .gpx data from their daily drives to the site. (Is there an iPhone app in the works?) In return, they get personal informatics about their commute efficiency, cost, and carbon footprint. And how much they would save (in real cash money) if they'd been driving an electric. Could be used to pit neighbors against each other, à la this California MUD's social comparison energy bills. Communities of hackers. They've released the totally naive controller algorithm (always hit capacitor first, then battery) as open source in Ruby. Hackers are encouraged to submit better algorithms. One of them will win an electric car. And über bragging rights. Communities of mechanics. Pittsburgh is full of good mechanics and metal shops. One chop shop owner gutted the engine, gas tank, and transmission from a Toyota Scion demo car for free (the parts were worth more to him than his time) so the researchers could fill it with their own electric engine and batteries. ChargeCar would foster a community of mechanics to recycle cars (like Cash for Clunkers, eco-style).
addendum: vegetarian zombie tattoo beats all
Per the last post, Seth figured out the winning combination:
The online dating site OKCupid, which had me at "hello, here's how our match algorithm works," has been publishing troves of great stats about self-presentation and response rates. In their latest analysis of the impact of words in conversational overtures, they find that netspeak (ur, u, luv) and physical compliments (sexy, hot, cutie) are a big FAIL. And that niche interests (like "zombie" and "vegetarian") increase reply rates. Their presentation of the results is even great (but guys, where are the error bars? What's a stats nerd to think?): It's remarkably similar to the research I did the first couple of years in grad school, using machine learning to identify phrases that predict whether a forum message will get a response. In controlled field experiments we found that saying things like "I've been lurking here" or "I've been following this thread" roughly doubled reply rates. Seriously. (PDF of our paper on rhetorical strategies). But their data set is waaay juicier.
Just submitted the final version of this paper: Burke, M., Kraut, R., and Williams, D. (to appear). Social use of computer-mediated communication by adults on the autism spectrum. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 2010. PDF It's going to be the foundation of my thesis, and I'm psyched to be applying a combination of ninja data-munging and ethnography on a really meaningful problem. The gist is that a lot of adults on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum are using Facebook, fan forums, online dating sites, and IM to meet new people and support existing relationships in a relatively comfortable medium. CMC removes the need for eye contact, reduces pressure to respond quickly, and is fairly structured and predictable, all properties that mesh with characteristics common to individuals with autism. By removing intonation and nonverbal cues (occasional emoticon ;-) notwithstanding), CMC levels the playing field for interpretation (or misinterpretation). But CMC isn't ideal. It removes some forms of feedback and is subject to emerging social norms (such as how quickly to reply to an email from a new acquaintance). It's hard to tell who to trust, especially if you don't have a strong network of mutual acquaintances to vouch for someone. Last spring I interviewed 16 Pittsburgh-area adults on the autism spectrum, and they shared their email inboxes, fan fiction, and MySpace pages with me. We talked about face-to-face social interactions, especially with classmates, co-workers, family, and friends. Then we logged in together and they walked me through any online communities or CMC tools they regularly used, and explained how online interactions differed from face-to-face ones. About half of the adults in the study were actively seeking to build new relationships, so this paper documents their successes and challenges, and proposes technology designs to support their goals. One of the biggest challenges for several interviewees was figuring out social norms online. What should I say in my online dating profile? How soon should I email a new friend? How many Facebook status updates is too many? This is a problem for everybody to some degree, so interventions focused on one population should generalize well. So, I'm thinking about modeling typical social interactions online (messaging frequency, status updating, txting, tweeting, etc.), plotting distributions of activity, and showing an individual where he or she fits on that distribution. ("You update your status more than 60% of your friends, and more than 71% of all Facebook users your age.") And showing outcomes for following/deviating from the norms ("People who post their Farmville stories *this* often are 3X more likely to get unfriended.") The things that are easiest to measure aren't usually the most important (e.g., good friends won't diss you for tweeting too much, but poor phone or txting manners can stress a fledgling relationship), so if you have ideas for good behaviors to measure (and how to do it), shoot them my way. We're also talking about creating social stories (vignettes about somewhat ambiguous social situations) specific to CMC.
From Ammon Shea's piece in this week's On Language. Those who have pet peeves about language have chosen their domain of umbrage well, since it is inevitable that people will continue to make errors in speech and writing, and so there will always be something to be offended by, which can be very comforting. And because the most savory quotes from the piece were longer than 140 characters--the man makes a great, if verbose, argument--I'm posting it here rather than Twitter. If Shea keeps contributing to the Times, perhaps this blog won't languish.
The Delta check-in agent at Pittsburgh's airport was shocked that anyone would want to go to Jordan. For fun. She kept asking if my friends and I worked there or had family in the Middle East. We told her we wanted to go desert hiking. She goes, "You can't do that in Moab?" We have since returned from Jordan, which is the most hospitable developing country I've ever visited. Every day we fielded dozens of strangers' invitations in for tea, smiled when they'd cheer "Obama" when we told them we were from the U.S., and ate copious mezza of hummous, tabbouli, baba ganouj, foul, and pita. Upon learning that some in our group love the local dish "mansaf," our cab driver on the way to the airport the last night lamented our departure, because he wanted us to come have mansaf with his family. He may also have been hoping to marry Amy to his oldest son, that part was a little unclear. Petra, the partially excavated city of the ancient Nabataeans, beat Machu Picchu in archeological scope and lack of tourists (at least on the alternate hike into the ruins we took). We hiked and camped in the Wadi Rum desert for three days, with part of the group on camels, and part walking. Our gracious guides at Wadi Rum Adventures cooked feasts for lunch and dinner (including veggie bean dishes for me), and made the sand hiking look effortless. We stargazed and sang Bedouin songs at night. The snorkeling at Aqaba, along the Red Sea, is some of the best I've ever seen, and Rani, our host at the Bedouin Moon Hotel was incredibly helpful. He called all of the hotels in Downtown Amman before we headed there to work out a deal (which ended up being far cheaper than anything in our Rough Guide). Eilat, Aqaba's sister city in Israel was also gorgeous, but waaay more ritzy. Although the Israeli border guards were pretty jovial when we interrupted their dinner (and again, there was talk of marrying Amy off). I can't extol the virtues of Jordan enough. People everywhere kept saying "welcome" and parents would nudge their children toward us, prompting them to welcome us, too. It's as if there were some giant tourism campaign and everybody was in on it. Merchants would ask about my family, not in an effort to bilk me or sell trinkets, but because they genuinely cared. Oh, and the whole not having vowels thing was pretty fun, too. Made for some amusing signs. More pictures on Flickr:
TurboTax should perhaps choose its stock photo models more carefully. Martha Stewart is the last person I want tax advice from.
From Time's "Why Facebook is for Old Fogies": We [the middle-aged] are lazy. We have jobs and children and houses and substance-abuse problems to deal with. At our age, we don't want to do anything. What we want is to hear about other people doing things and then judge them for it. Which is what news feeds are for. Dude, this is a pleasure that knows no ageism. I get plenty of satisfaction judging others in my feed. And yes, if you're reading this, that probably means you. But once those pictures from last weekend's "summer in February" party come out, you'll be judging me, too. C'est la vie virtual. I still hold that that bikini top was appropriate public attire.
Review of Freakonomics over in Reading.
From the profile of urban environmental leader Van Jones in the New Yorker: When his parents gave him Luke Skywalker and Han Solo action figures, instead of arranging them to fight he would have them run for imaginary public offices.
Keeping up (down) with the Joneses, energy-wise
Social comparison theory got a California woman to unplug her kegerator. She learned through an innovative experiment by her utility company that her neighbors used far less electricity than she did, and so she wanted to keep up (well, down). Last year the Sacramento Municipal Utility District sent 35,000 customers their monthly energy use compared to that of 100 neighbors with similar-sized homes and the same heating fuel, as well as the top-20 most energy-efficient neighbors. A control group got standard statements without comparisons. They found that customers with the custom statement reduced energy consumption by 2% over six months. This graphic says it all. Ten more cities have picked up on the social comparison idea, and are including bar graphs on paper statements. It would be trivial to include these charts on utility websites and embed them in monthly statement reminder emails for customers doing paperless billing. If you're in Pittsburgh, let Duquesne Light know you'd like to see this!
Ping pointed out a cute meme that I'm jumping on. The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you. This offer does have some restrictions and limitations: I make no guarantees that you will like what I make! What I create will be just for you. It'll be done this year. No guarantees when, it will be a total surprise! You have no clue what it's going to be. I may draw or paint or knit something. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure! I reserve the right to do something extremely strange. The catch? Oh, the catch is that you have to repost this, and repost right away. We can all make stuff and make someone's day a little bit brighter! Don't respond if you aren't going to offer the same thing. Love, Moira P.S. If you reply, please e-mail me your address as well, so I know where to send your surprise.
Just finished submitting Feed Me: Motivating Newcomer Contribution in Social Network Sites ( PDF). The gist is that we analyzed a large group of newly registered FB users and counted all the things they did (or their friends did) in their first two weeks, and predicted how the newbies would behave three months later (how many photos they'd upload). We found that if their friends are uploading photos, they're more likely to, as well (no surprise). And early photo comments are good. But there are some surprises about tagging in there. What makes this especially cool is that it's the first peer-reviewed publication to come from Facebook's own server data. We were somewhat skeptical about the company letting us publish at first, but the legal team was totally supportive about sharing knowledge with the world, and we were careful to use aggregate data so as to protect users' privacy. The awesome Facebook Data Team does all kinds of brilliant work, so hopefully this is the first of many papers to come from FB. Yay for science!
Was anyone else creeped out by this article about cloning pets? It ostensibly portrays a typical American family living a typical life with their two dogs, clones of a deceased pet. They hike, chase each other off-leash, and like "lots of snuggles." So far, so good. We begin to think cloned pets aren't so far fetched. But there's a disturbing undertone, mostly from a handful of offhand remarks: The South Korean geneticist who performed the cloning was fired from his university for claiming to have cloned humans in 2004. However, the owners of the cloned pet aren't concerned. "He's been very open with me about admitting his mistakes. Nobody says he lied about cloning animals." The dog owners are divorced and have a son. Says the husband of his ex-wife: "an excellent genetic donor, by the way." The 8-year-old son is studying high school algebra. The dad brings a notebook of quadratic equation problems in case the son gets bored at the lake. The science doesn't come across as creepy; the family does.
An exciting confluence of green auto news this week: Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski recently won a contract with Nissan to bring all-electric cars to the state for testing, and is courting a Chinese hybrid manufacturer whose car goes 80 miles per charge (which is roughly twice the average American round-trip commute of 32 miles). Let's hope the power comes from hydroelectric, solar, and other green sources. GM closes more SUV plants. Reading the heartbreaking stories about the workers at this plant can't help but make you feel sympathy for those losing their jobs. And several comments on the Kulongoski story expressed anger that the governor was supporting foreign automakers. But Kulongoski hopes to bring manufacturing and final assembly to Oregon, stimulating local jobs, and it's hard to feel bad for GM the corporation when it's still trying to open SUV plants in Russia. In better U.S. automaker news, the intrepid band of YERTians (with the Your Environmental Road Trip project, who spent the last year documenting the best and worst sustainability practices across the U.S.) found that a Ford plant in Dearborn, MI, has the largest living roof in the world. The plant's also hoping for LEED Silver certification (as they discuss in YERT's pretty funny video). Electric car entrepreneur Shai Agassi will be speaking at this year's TED conference. A Massachusetts man recently ran his major appliances for several days during an ice storm with his Prius. On five gallons of gas.
Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner covers some of the social benefits of teasing in the NYTimes Magazine today: indirect communication of group norms (such as the frat boys who use a nickname to hint that you shouldn't drink *too* much), collective stress release through laughing (even for the target), and flirtation. He frames it in Brown & Levinson's politeness theory, especially the "off record" part of their framework, where you never explicitly say what you mean, you hint. So what about teasing in computer-mediated communication? Will we ever develop the skills to signal and interpret playful teasing online, or are we stuck in binary world of vanilla literalism and cyberbullying? I don't think that's true, but we already know that people are pretty lousy at interpreting tone in CMC, and there was certainly an element of mixed signals in the Megan Meier case. (Had Megan met "Josh" in person, her feelings might have been less intense than those constructed from text only, and had there been more face-to-face contact between Megan and Lori Drew's daughter, some of the deference signals Keltner mentions (such as blushing and head lowering) might have convinced the Drews to back off. But that's just morbid Monday morning quarterbacking, and this is a pretty extreme case.) But on to happier topics: Can we detect friendly joshing and flirting online? Sure (to an extent), but what about from people we've never met face-to-face? Do you have to be able to picture the speaker smiling while you read the text or imagine his voice? And what are the mechanisms for social norming (like with the frat house morality tale) online? Do you just monitor your facebook feed to see what's acceptable in your friend circle? Do we have to pepper everything with emoticons? Can we build machine learning tools to detect it automatically, say, so parents or Facebook (barring privacy issues right now) can distinguish between the good kind of teasing and potential harassment? The few politeness detectors out there don't include any of B&L's off-record markers (the on-record markers, like inclusive language or token agreement are hard enough). I'm looking forward to the next decade of communication research as our online behavior norms start to cement and as our tools for analysis get better.
Expectation minimization is the way to my heart
Apple just blew my mind. My laptop video card has been sketchy, not always waking after sleep. So I took it to the Apple store on Saturday for repairs. They sent it off, saying that I should expect it to arrive a week from Tuesday, and I'd need to restore all of my data and software. Bummer. It just arrived this morning, five days early, with data intact. And no charge. I guess lowering my expectations is the best way to win me over. Now if only Apple made men.
Gazillions of years ago I wrote about companies that use a human voice when communicating with customers rather than formal legalese. Back then it was novel, all pre-Web 2.0. Google now says cheeky things like "cross your fingers" during server errors. So it's interesting to see how a company responds when it's expecting to get flack, like during a redesign. Facebook uses its blog (in part) for that: here's wunderkind engineer Slee explaining the new Facebook back in July, hoping to prevent some of the inevitable griping when things get moved around. But I think I saw my favorite example on another site today:
Last night some friends and I got to be a part of the RV Eatin' project, in which three women serve gourmet meals inside their cozy, brightly-painted RV. All of the food was grown locally, including delicious scarlet runner beans, and the chefs good-naturedly put up with our request for a vegan, gluten-free, and nut-free meal and with the silly insistence of security guards that they move their trailer. Twice. (Which they did with stunning vigor despite its heft and the near-freezing weather). The menu and some pics are available at RV Eatin's blog.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on winning the Nobel Prize in Economics today: For readers of the column, maybe they will read a little more carefully when I’m being economistic, or maybe have a little more tolerance when I’m being boring. In related news, the annual Ig Nobel prizes for "research that makes people laugh and then think" held its 2008 ceremony last week. The full list of Ig Nobel winners is at their site, with full citations. Selected favorite findings: Nutrition: Electronic modification of the sound of potato chips to make them sound fresher. Medicine: High-priced placebos are more effective than low-priced placebos. Economics: Professional lap dancers make higher tips when ovulating. Peace (last year): Airborne chemicals could make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other.
Had a potluck tonight with tons of friends who made the VP debates bearable. Bonus points to Erin, who upon hearing Palin's support of women's rights said she felt her uterus shrivel. And to Janice, who pointed out McCain's love of puppies. And to Turadg, who determined that Bosniaks is a real word. We had a themed dinner menu, including: Bruschetta to nowhere Moose couscous (made with seitan) Tree-hugging liberal bastard quiche Foreign policy experience German potato salad 700 billion lentils "I'll get back to you" dip Mush d'orange Old pasta salad Green party green beans White house cherry Klondike bars Native American popcorn And to drink: White Russians Swing state beer (Yuengling) Economic collapse Malbec (from Argentina) Cheese-eating surrender monkey Cabernet
Yet another reason why I like our state's governor (in addition to his health care legislation): Here's his response to McCain's attempt to postpone Friday's debate: “What, does McCain think the Senate will still be working at 9 p.m. Friday?” Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania said in an interview, referring to the scheduled start time of the debate. “I think this is all political — I wish McCain had shown the same concern when he didn’t show up in the Senate to vote on the extension of the renewable energy tax credit.” (NY Times)
Some recent studies with surprising results: * Cows point north-south. Scientists studying blind mole rats, who are able to find their way in underground tunnels using electromagnetic fields, were curious whether larger animals also perceived magnetism. They watched herds of cows grazing in several locations throughout the day using Google Earth and determined that cattle do, indeed, orient themselves toward the magnetic pole. The images weren't high-res enough to tell if the cows were facing north or south, but other scientists observing deer in the Czech Republic found those animals to point north. * Female relatives of male homosexuals have more offspring. Geneticists studying the paradox of the persistence of homosexuality across generations despite the fact that most gay men don't reproduce believe that there may be a gene (or combination of genes) carried on the X chromosome that influences sexual identity, and may be linked to higher fertility among their maternal relatives. (source article) I learned about the second study from the Stranger's Dear Science podcast. And I have a crush on the author. Science is sexy.