Posts Tagged ‘motivation’
Cognitive Biases are Fun!
George Carlin once pointed out that comedy depends on exaggeration — to make something funny, you must distort one aspect of the situation or description to introduce humor.
If you’re thinking, “I don’t have to exaggerate anything…I make enough mistakes to feed a hundred comics for a year,” you’re probably right. We’re all susceptible to cognitive biases that skew our judgment. If you’ve read any of Dan Ariely’s work (Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty) or read the pop psych literature, you know the human mind is a frighteningly powerful yet flawed instrument.
I have good news: you can identify and minimize the impact of cognitive biases. What’s more, performers can use them to create humorous situations on stage. I downloaded a list of cognitive biases and will do my best to explore how they affect the world where business and funny intersect.
I first thought of writing a series of posts after a ComedySportz gig for health care professional employed by the Oregon penal system. One of their handouts (I always grab the handouts) listed about 120 cognitive biases and logical traps affecting the reasoning inmates and others use to assess their circumstances. I’ll leave the connection between prison, work, and comedy to your fertile brains.
First up? Everyone’s favorite trap: confirmation bias.
Gamification: Game Design and Addiction
I’m the editor and chief reviewer of Technology and Society Book Reviews, a site I founded in February 1998. I recently reviewed Natasha Dow Schüll’s book Addiction by Design, which makes many points relevant to my post on the ethics of gamification. The full text of my review appears below.
Title: Addiction by Design
Author: Natasha Dow Schüll
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Copyright: 2012
ISBN13: 978-0-691-12755-2
Length: 444
Price: $35.00
Rating: 89%
I purchased this book for personal use.
Natasha Dow Schüll, an associate professor in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society, explored the allure of food in mass quantities in her documentary Buffet: All You Can Eat Las Vegas. In her new book Addiction by Design from Princeton University Press, she examines how machine and game design facilitate addictive behavior.
Human Side of the Equation
Schüll begins by describing the human cost of gambling addiction by profiling several individuals, all of whom have driven themselves and their families into difficult situations because of their gambling. One woman interviewed by the author has structured her daily routine to visit a circuit of gambling establishments, including casinos and grocery stores with video poker machines. The small footprint, low operating costs, and revenue generation capacity of machines means that table games such as blackjack and craps have been squeezed into increasingly smaller spaces. Mirroring this trend, the typical problem gambler has changed from a middle-aged man who bets on sports or blackjack and waits ten years to get help to a 35 year-old woman with two kids who plays video poker and seeks help after just two years.
The financial windfall generated by problem gamblers is staggering. One study by Tracy Shrans indicated that gamblers who follow the industry’s “responsible gaming rules of conduct” (e.g, setting time and money limits, understanding the odds of the games, and not gambling when you’re lonely, angry, or depressed) generate just 4% of gambling revenue. A slew of studies, notably work published in 1998 by Lesieur (cited p. 16), estimate that problem gamblers generate between 30-60% of casino revenue. Part of gambling’s attraction is the possibility, however remote, of winning a significant amount of money, but the varied reward schedule plays a significant role as well.
Entering the Machine Zone
The effectiveness of a varied reward schedule holds true across the animal kingdom. Rats that press a lever and receive a food pellet every time will press only when they’re hungry, but rats rewarded on an irregular schedule, where they have no idea when the next food pellet will drop, will press the lever until exhausted. When the rewards come not from food but from direct stimulation of the endogenous reward system, the effects are even more pronounced. In her Great Courses video series Understanding the Brain, Jeanette Norden notes that rats with wires inserted into their brains, allowing them to stimulate their pleasure centers by pressing a lever, will forgo all other activities — including but not limited to sleeping, eating, and sex — to press the lever. She described the scene of an exhausted, filthy rat collapsed on the floor of its cage, reaching with its last bit of strength to press the lever just one more time.
According to Schüll’s analysis, the analog for humans appears to be entering the “machine zone”, where the player is engrossed in the game and their interaction with the machine. Unlike poker and other table games that provide experiences mediated by other humans and offer occasional thrills, machine gamblers are able to maintain stimulation for as long as their bankroll allows. The rhythm of their interaction with the device induces comfort and, most importantly, lets the player escape from the world for a time. Game designers have capitalized on this trend by offering multi-line video slot machines with as many as 100 payouts. The result is that most spins pay something, but the majority of spins pay less than the player wagered. Rather than a singular win or loss, these fractional payouts provide a smoother ride down as the built-in house advantage grinds away at the player’s bankroll.
Nevada is arguably the most libertarian state in the U.S., so it’s no surprise the gaming industry bases its arguments against limiting game design and player tracking on the grounds of personal responsibility. Schüll implies, but never as far as I could tell directly states that the games’ design promotes addiction. She probably couldn’t do so because of legal concerns and the inherent difficulty in proving such a statement, which is fair enough. That said, if there ever is such proof, it’s likely that the self-exclusion policies in other gambling jurisdictions such as British Columbia, Canada, and Australia would be replaced by stricter rules.
Conclusions
Schüll goes beyond the basic “reward schedule” addiction analysis so common in the literature and casts the role of casinos and their visitors in terms of the social theories of Weber, Levi-Strauss, and Foucault, mirroring the theoretical underpinnings of MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society. (Though this publication and the program have similar names, we are not affiliated.) I thought her analysis added value to the book, but the sections didn’t feel tightly integrated with the rest of the narrative. Schüll wrote the book over several years and the book’s cohesiveness might have suffered a bit because of it. Important life events take priority, of course, and despite some small shortcomings Addiction by Design is a detailed, useful, and readable analysis of machine gambling and the players on all sides of the game.
Curtis Frye is the editor of Technology and Society Book Reviews. He is the author of more than 30 books, including Improspectives, his look at applying the principles of improv comedy to business and life. His list includes more than 20 books for Microsoft Press and O’Reilly Media; he has also created over a dozen online training courses for lynda.com. In addition to his writing, Curt is a keynote speaker and entertainer. You can find more information about him at www.curtisfrye.com.
My Experiences Thus Far with MOOCs
I’m an information forager, someone who wanders among topics picking up bits and pieces of knowledge as I go. If you offer me a good way to gain information and experience, you’ll get my attention.
I’ve sort of fallen in love with the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) offerings from Coursera. I’ve successfully completed seven of the courses, ranging from an easy introductory course on geospatial information and mapping to a challenging course on machine learning. I bit off substantially more than I could chew when I signed up for a natural language processing class, but at least I had the good sense to pack it in when I saw I didn’t have the skills to complete the assignments.
One of my just-completed courses was Model Thinking, by Professor Scott Page from the University of Michigan and the Santa Fe Institute. This session was the second time the course was offered and, as it turned out, it was an exact repeat of the first session. Dr. Page and his assistants didn’t update any of the lectures (or even edit out coughs and other flubs from original recording), participate in the class’s discussion forums, tweet from the advertised Twitter account, or update the class’s Facebook page or blog. As befits a summer offering, the class ran entirely on autopilot.
We’re very early in the days of MOOC development, so there are a lot of experiments going on as professors and institutions determine how to present MOOCs and incorporate them into university curricula. One of the big problems MOOC providers have to face is the immense number of individuals who sign up for the class but never watch a single movie. In some cases, only a third of students who sign up for a MOOC watch even one lecture, and most courses have pass rates of less than 10% (7% is typical). Part of the problem is that there’s no real penalty for not finishing the course — you know you didn’t do the work, but there’s no social stigma attached to it. And besides, you can always download the movies and watch them at your leisure.
Dr. Page seemed to address this dropout issue by making the Model Thinking class very easy to pass. Grades were calculated by adding 50% of your quiz scores (dropping the lowest two) and 50% of your exam scores, with everyone who scored a total of 75% or higher receiving a certificate. But here’s the kicker: you got three attempts at each quiz and the system displayed the correct answers after you took the quiz for the first time. All students had to do was write down the answers and re-take the quiz to get a perfect score.
Like the quizzes, you got three shots at the mid-term and final, but the system didn’t display the correct answers. It did tell you where to find the information required to answer the question, but you had to figure out the answer for yourself. Even so, if you received a perfect score on the quizzes (hard not to), you only had to get half the exam questions right to pass. The only reason a mildly attentive student couldn’t pass the course would be a lack of time to take the quizzes and exams. You barely needed to watch the lecture movies.
Is this strategy a good way to improve MOOC completion rates? Yes, if that’s your only goal. I would be very interested to learn how this Model Thinking class session’s completion and engagement rates compare to those of other MOOCs, but I wonder how much material students who took the easy route retained. If there’s no significant marginal cost per technically passing but unengaged student, perhaps it’s OK if they take little or no knowledge from the course. At the very least, it’s a worthwhile experiment.
Gamification: Deploy the Appropriate Tools
My previous set of posts described elements of gamification (such as meaningful choices and conflict) and how to incorporate them into business and improv. Kevin Werbach and his coauthor Dan Hunter also identify six steps to gamification (For the Win, p. 86), which I think provide an excellent framework for business and theatrical endeavors. I took a wild stab at designing for fun in my last post. In this post, I’ll talk about deploying the appropriate tools.
As a quick review, the authors’ six D’s are:
- Define business objectives
- Delineate target behaviors
- Describe your players
- Devise activity cycles
- Don’t forget the fun!
- Deploy the appropriate tools
Deploying the appropriate tools is where the cool concepts you’ve brought together become a system you can poke, prod, enter data into, and get feedback from. If you’re measuring data entry, you can automate the process. If you’re measuring geographic information or activity, you might program a mobile app to capture the data automatically. Otherwise, you need to create a system that combines automatic data collection with user entry. The specifics will change based on your environment and resources, but bear in mind that almost any system will require a significant investment of time, money, or both.
In an improv context, deploying the appropriate tools occurs in the context of creating your show and presenting your product. How you present your performances, from your venue to your costumes and format, shapes your audience’s expectations and reactions. Much improv comedy happens in restaurants, bars, and other spaces where the performance is secondary to the venue’s revenue stream. The venue often provides the space in exchange for a little rent or in the hope that the performers’ friends will eat and drink during the show. All the performer needs to do is put on their dark colored top, jeans, and soft-soled black shoes to get going. Troupes with dedicated spaces must pay attention to audience seating, bathroom access, and availability of snacks, drinks, and swag to buy at the performance.
You also have to create feedback mechanisms for the audience and performers. As I’ve said in other contexts, the audience isn’t there for the performers’ sake — they attended the show to have an enjoyable night out. Even your best friends wouldn’t see more than one show if the experience was so dire they didn’t enjoy themselves. You can get feedback from troupe members sitting in the audience and, in addition to watching the show, paying careful attention to the audience’s reaction. It’s easy to develop “laughing ears” where every reaction, regardless of how small, seems like a standing ovation. A teammate in the seats can help you see and hear what the audience really thinks. It’s your job to listen.
I’ll close out this section on gamification with a look at ethical considerations. Is it possible to use game mechanics to oppress your workers? Oh, yes…
Gamification: Devising Activity Cycles
My previous set of posts described elements of gamification (such as meaningful choices and conflict) and how to incorporate them into business and improv. Kevin Werbach and his coauthor Dan Hunter also identify six steps to gamification (For the Win, p. 86), which I think provide an excellent framework for business and theatrical endeavors. I just examined how you can describe your players using personas. In this post, I’ll talk about devising activity cycles.
As a quick review, the authors’ six D’s are:
- Define business objectives
- Delineate target behaviors
- Describe your players
- Devise activity cycles
- Don’t forget the fun!
- Deploy the appropriate tools
In a gamification context, activity cycles are the actions you want your players (teammates, customers, co-workers, etc.) to take. You can think of activity cycles as patterns of interaction with your site that represent a task or series of tasks taken to completion. As an example, consider how you check in at sites on FourSquare. Your activity cycle involves pulling up the app on your phone, having it sense your location, and giving it permission to check you in at that location. You can also earn badges, receive special offers, and be named Mayor of a location by checking in there more than everyone else.
Some sites have longer activity cycles. TeamSnap offers a website where you can track your sports teams’ rosters, schedule practices, track attendance, and record game results. You can even assign team members (or their parents) tasks such as bringing snacks to the game. TeamSnap’s also useful for improv groups who want to track practices, send messages, and schedule shows. (Full disclosure: I’m good friends with several TeamSnap executives and my main improv group, ComedySportz Portland, uses their site to track our activities.)
Businesses have activity cycles in all aspects of their operations. Client generation, sales tracking, and customer service all lend themselves to gamification. In some sense, businesses that track sales performance and use other measures to rank their employees already use elements of gamification, but many times those scenarios take on the tenor of the “motivational speech” Alec Baldwin’s character Blake delivers at the start of a monthly sales contest in the film version of Glengarry Glen Ross. In that contest, first place is a Cadillac El Dorado, second place is a set of steak knives, and third place is “You’re fired.”
Some bosses thrive on intimidation and insult, but that approach goes against the spirit of gamification. If you want to gamify successfully, you can’t forget the fun.
Improspectives 
You must be logged in to post a comment.