Social media and bad decisions

In his famous dialogue Phaedrus, Plato puts the following words in Socrates's mouth:

If men learn [writing], it will implant forgetfulness in their souls.  They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. 

What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder.  And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only the semblance of wisdom, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much while for the most part they know nothing.  And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to their fellows...

You know, Phaedrus, that is the strange thing about writing, which makes it truly correspond to painting.  The painter’s products stand before us as though they were alive.  But if you question them, they maintain a most majestic silence.  It is the same with written words.  They seem to talk to you as though they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say from a desire to be instructed they go on telling just the same thing forever.

I'm always reminded of this every time I hear the "kids these days" schtick from People Of A Certain Age, about how young adults are constantly hunched over their phones and rely on Google and don't know anything because they can look it up on Wikipedia.   Back In Our Day, we had to go to the library if we wanted to look something up.  On foot, uphill, and in the snow.  And once we got there, find what we were looking for in a card catalog.

That was printed in freakin' cuneiform on clay tablets.

And we appreciated it, dammit.

You hear this kind of thing aimed most often at social media -- that the use of Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and so on, not to mention text messaging, takes people away from face-to-face social interactions they would have otherwise had, and the current ubiquity of this technology is correlated with depression, poor relationship outcomes, and even teen suicide.  The evidence, however, is far from rock solid; these correlations are tenuous at best, and even if there are correlations, it's a long way from proven that the use of social media caused all of the negative trends.

My (admittedly purely anecdotal) observations of teenagers leads me to the conclusion that the number of truly internet-addicted kids is small, and that social, well-adjusted kids are social and well-adjusted with or without their cellphones.  And I can say from my own socially-isolated childhood that having a cellphone would probably not have affected it one way or the other -- even if I magically had Facebook when I was sixteen, I probably would still have been the shy, lonely kid who spent most of his free time in his room.

[Image is in the Public Domain]

That's not to say there aren't some interesting, if troubling, correlations.  A study published recently in The Journal of Behavioral Addictions looked at the connection between social media use and performance on the "Iowa Gambling Task," a simulation that is used to pinpoint impaired decision-making in situations like heroin addiction.  The authors write:

Our results demonstrate that more severe, excessive SNS [social networking site] use is associated with more deficient value-based decision making.  In particular, our results indicate that excessive SNS users may make more risky decisions during the IGT task...  This result further supports a parallel between individuals with problematic, excessive SNS use, and individuals with substance use and behavioral addictive disorders.

The trouble with the study -- which, to be fair, the researchers are up front about -- is that it's a small sample size (71 individuals) and relied on self-reporting for measurement of the daily duration of social media use for each participant.  Self-reporting is notoriously inaccurate -- there have been dozens of studies showing that (for example) self-reporting of diet consistently results in underestimates of the number of calories consumed, and participants have even reported calorie intakes that are "insufficient to support life" without any apparent awareness that they were giving the researchers wildly incorrect information.

So self-reporting of the number of hours spent on social media?  Especially given the negative press social media has gotten recently?  I'm a little suspicious.  The researchers say that their experiment should be repeated with a larger sample size and up-front monitoring of social media use -- which, honestly, should have been done in the first place, prior to publishing the study.

But even so, it's a curious result, and if it bears out, it'll be interesting to parse why Facebook use should be correlated with poor decision-making.  These sorts of correlations often lead to deeper understanding of our own behavior, and that's all to the good.

But now that I'm done writing this, y'all'll have to excuse me so I can post links to today's Skeptophilia on Facebook and Twitter.  You know how it goes.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is about a subject near and dear to my heart; the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life.  In The Three-Body Problem, Chinese science fiction writer Cixin Liu takes an interesting angle on this question; if intelligent life were discovered in the universe -- maybe if it even gave us a visit -- how would humans react?

Liu examines the impact of finding we're not alone in the cosmos from political, social, and religious perspectives, and doesn't engage in any pollyanna-ish assumptions that we'll all be hunky-dory and ascend to the next plane of existence.  What he does think might happen, though, makes for fascinating reading, and leaves you pondering our place in the universe for days after you turn over the last page.

[Note: if you purchase this book from the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

All by myself

A couple of days ago, a friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a link, and asked, "What would an introvert make of this?"

He asked me for good reason.  I've been an introvert all my life, but it's only gotten more pronounced as I've aged.  I can be shy and socially awkward to the point of deer-in-the-headlights panic.  I go to parties, mostly on my (much more outgoing) wife's urging, but unless I know everyone there -- not that likely -- I'll be the guy with a glass of scotch in my hand, looking around for a dog to socialize with.  I've been known to spend an entire evening at a social gathering, and speak twice -- "Hi, thanks for inviting me," and "Thanks, it was great."

The upside: I'm a good listener.  But still.

In any case, the link was to a paper in the journal Current Opinion in Psychology called "Social Baseline Theory: The Social Regulation of Risk and Effort," by James A. Coan and David A. Sbarra, which makes an interesting claim; that humans are basically social animals, so if you want to see someone acting in the normal way -- his/her "social baseline" -- don't use the usual psychological norm of observation in solitude, see how (s)he behaves in a group.

The authors write:

According to [social baseline theory], the human brain assumes proximity to social resources—resources that comprise the intrinsically social environment to which it is adapted.  Put another way, the human brain expects access to relationships characterized by interdependence, shared goals, and joint attention.  Violations of this expectation increase cognitive and physiological effort as the brain perceives fewer available resources and prepares the body to either conserve or more heavily invest its own energy.  This increase in cognitive and physiological effort is frequently accompanied by distress, both acute and chronic, with all the negative sequelae for health and well being that implies.

The implications to psychological research, if this is true, are obvious.  Take, for example, how functional MRI research is generally conducted:

In functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research, a standard convention is to compare an experimental treatment to a “resting baseline” characterized by simply lying alone in the scanner.  This convention is predicated on the reasonable assumption that experimental treatments present stimuli otherwise absent from the sensorium while participants are alone.  But inspection of brain activity in several studies... now suggests the brain responds to being alone as if sensory stimuli have been added, not taken away.  That is, the brain looks more “at rest” when social resources are obviously available.  This presents a puzzle potentially resolvable by considering proximity to a familiar other the brain’s true “baseline” state, and being alone as more like an experimental treatment—a context that adds perceived work for the brain to do.

Which certainly adds a layer of complication to studying the workings of the brain.

However, my friend's question is well taken.  Wouldn't there be considerable variation in this response, so much so that it wouldn't represent a baseline in any kind of general manner?  Taking myself as an example -- and other introverts I've talked to agree -- it requires far more energy to be with people than to be alone.  I love my family and friends, but I'm never completely relaxed when I'm around other people.  Interacting is work.  It's rewarding work, and the connections I've made to people are not something I'd ever want to give up, but it's definitely more taxing than being alone.

Solitude (2006) [image courtesy of photographer Aiko Matsuoka and the Wikimedia Commons]

I notice this especially given my day job as a high school biology teacher.  My students are wonderful, and I definitely enjoy their energy and their interest, but being around them is simply exhausting for me.  At the end of the day, usually the last thing I want is to be around more people.  What I really want is to shut myself in my office, and put on some music, and relax.

Preferably with a dog and a glass of scotch.

So it's an intriguing idea, but I'm inclined to question its conclusions, at least as they apply to humanity as a whole.  I suppose it will always be hard to come up with any broad-brush generalizations with which to characterize the human mind.  Part of what makes us so interesting to each other is that no two of us reacts precisely the same way.

And now I must draw this to a close, because I've got to go to work.  First week back at school after a long break.  We'll see how it goes.  I don't have any other options, of course, given that I need the paycheck and it's a little early in the day to start drinking.

Scary Sophia

I find the human mind baffling, not least because the way it is built virtually guarantees that the most logical, rational, and dispassionate human being can without warning find him/herself swung around by the emotions, and in a flash end up in a morass of gut-feeling irrationality.

This happened to me yesterday because of a link a friend sent me regarding some of the latest advances in artificial intelligence.  The AI world has been zooming ahead lately, its most recent accomplishment being a computer that beat world master Fan Hui at the game of Go, long thought to be so complex and subtle that it would be impossible to program.

But after all, those sorts of things are, at their base, algorithmic.  Go might be complicated, but the rules are unvarying.  Once someone created software capable of playing the game, it was only a matter of time before further refinements allowed the computer to play so well it could defeat a human.

More interesting to me are the things that are (supposedly) unique to us humans -- emotion, creativity, love, curiosity.  This is where the field of robotics comes in, because there are researchers whose goal has been to make a robot whose interactions are so human that it is indistinguishable from the real thing.  Starting with the emotion-mimicking robot "Kismet," robotics pioneer Cynthia Breazeal has gradually been improving her design until recently she developed "Jibo," touted as "the world's first social robot."  (The link has a short video about Jibo which is well worth watching.)

But with Jibo, there was no attempt to emulate a human face.  Jibo is more like a mobile computer screen with a cartoonish eye in the middle.  So David Hanson, of Hanson Robotics, decided to take it one step further, and create a robot that not only interacts, but appears human.

The result was Sophia, a robot who is (I think) supposed to look reassuringly lifelike.  So check out this video, and see if you think that's an apt characterization:

Now let me reiterate.  I am fascinated with robotics, and I think AI research is tremendously important, not only from its potential applications but for what it will teach us about how our own minds work.  But watching Sophia talk and interact didn't elicit wonder and delight in me.  Sophia doesn't look like a cute and friendly robot who I'd like to have hanging around the house so I didn't get lonely.

Sophia reminds me of the Borg queen, only less sexy.

Okay, okay, I know.  You've got to start somewhere, and Hanson's creation is truly remarkable.  Honestly, the fact that I had the reaction I did -- which included chills rippling down my backbone and a strong desire to shut off the video -- is indicative that we're getting close to emulating human responses.  We've clearly entered the "Uncanny Valley," that no-man's-land of nearly-human-but-not-human-enough that tells us we're nearing the mark.

What was curious, though, is that it was impossible for me to shut off my emotional reaction to Sophia.  I consider myself at least average in the rationality department, and (as I said before) I am interested in and support AI research.  But I don't think I could be in the same room as Sophia.  I'd be constantly looking over my shoulder waiting for her to come at me with a kitchen knife, still wearing that knowing little smile.

And that's not even considering how she answered Hanson's last question in the video, which is almost certainly just a glitch in the software.

I hope.

So I guess I'm more emotion-driven than I thought.  I wish David Hanson and his team the best of luck in their continuing research, and I'm really glad that his company is based in Austin, Texas, because it's far enough away from upstate New York that if Sophia gets loose and goes on a murderous rampage because of what I wrote about her, I'll at least have some warning before she gets here.

Kiss kiss bang bang

There's apparently a evolutionary significance to kissing.  Who knew?  I'm an evolutionary biologist by background, and I didn't know.  Me, I just thought it was kind of fun.

Wendy Hill, a neuroscientist at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, published research a couple of years ago that indicates that there are changes in levels of hormones when couples kiss.  Apparently, Hill's team paid heterosexual couples to kiss for fifteen minutes, and measured blood levels of various hormones before and after (and I can only imagine the lines of horny college guys waiting to sign up for this opportunity).  (Source)

The results were intriguing.  In particular, the hormone oxytocin seems to be affected by kissing. Oxytocin is one of the "feel-good hormones," and has been nicknamed the "cuddle hormone" because it is associated with the maternal instinct and caring for an infant, and the fact that its levels skyrocket in both genders immediately after orgasm.   The research indicates that oxytocin levels spike in men during kissing, but they fall in women.  This I find surprising, but I can't find anywhere that the researchers speculated as to why oxytocin falls in women after they kiss.  This to me would seem to indicate that men feel better after kissing and women feel worse, which seems a little odd.  Maybe it's because kissing makes men think about having an orgasm and makes women think about taking care of a infant.

In any case, it's interesting that 90% of human societies (according to the research study) "practice kissing." I don't know about the other 10%. Perhaps they rub foreheads together, or something. Perhaps they don't practice any more because they've figured out how to do it right.  It's a mystery.

The other intriguing find of the study was that men prefer "sloppy kisses," whereas evidently women don't.  The researchers explain this by positing that saliva contains trace amounts of testosterone, which is linked to increased sex drive in both genders, and swapping spit is a way of dialing up the response in your partner.  So, I guess that sloppy kisses are just another human male equivalent of the peacock shakin' his tail feathers -- a chemical way of saying, "hey, baby."  So, it falls in the same category as going to the gym to build up your biceps or owning a Jaguar.  It's a non-verbal statement that says, "I am just the most virile male you will ever meet in your life.  I have so much testosterone that I can just throw it away.  You definitely want me to be the father of your children."

Recently Paul Zak, "the world's expert on oxytocin," has published further studies (read about them here) that support the claim that oxytocin has a role in more than just sex, pair bonding, and the mother/infant relationship; it's apparently vital in all sorts of positive social interactions.  Zak, in fact, calls oxytocin "the moral molecule."  His studies indicate that people's oxytocin levels rise when they have pleasant encounters of all sorts; and if given boosts of oxytocin artificially, they tend to make more moral decisions and behave with more generosity and trust.  Oxytocin levels also spike, Zak found, when people play with their pets, socialize with their friends, and watch romantic movies with happy endings.  All of these are activities that are connected with pair bonding, social cohesion, and reciprocity -- phenomena that are intrinsic to life as a social primate, so no wonder this response is ubiquitous.  It'd be a pretty unpleasant world without it, wouldn't it?

Ah, natural selection. It explains so much.

Anyway, I find all of this stuff pretty fascinating, and I wish you luck conducting any empirical research on the subject that you have the opportunity to do.  Here's to raised oxytocin levels.