Scaring Them into Learning!?
Using a Snake Screen to
Enhance the Knowledge Transfer
Effectiveness of a Web Interface
Ned Kock
Sanchez School of Business
Texas A&M International University
Outline of presentation
•
•
•
•
•
•
Evolutionary theorizing in IS.
Evolution of psychological traits.
Evolved psychological traits today.
Evolution and correlation.
Surprise-enhanced cognition.
Experiment using a snake screen.
Special thanks
• Ruth Chatelain-Jardon
• Jesus Carmona
– Ruth and Jesus are doctoral students at the
Sanchez School of Business, Texas A&M
International University
Evolution and IS: Key researchers
• Several researchers have been conducting
evolutionary theorizing in information systems (IS):
– Chon Abraham, Iris Junglas, Blake Ives, Rick Watson
(basic human drives and behavior toward technology).
– Gad Saad, Barbara Fasolo, Alison Lenton, Peter Todd,
(online mate selection).
– Don Hantula, Diane Brockman, Carter Smith, Amy
Rajala (electronic consumer behavior).
– Geoffrey Hubona, Gregory Shirah (electronic user
interface design).
– John Mingers (autopoiesis and self-organizing
information sytems).
– Jaana Porra, Michael Parks (colonial systems and virtual
communities).
– Amanda Spink, Charles Cole (information search and
use behavior).
Evolutionary theorizing in IS
• Evolutionary theorizing in IS may take many forms.
• One of these forms is theorizing about the survivalrelated evolution of psychological traits among our
ancestors that may be associated with interesting
IS phenomena.
• This type of theorizing may provide the key to many
counterintuitive predictions of behavior toward
technology.
• Many of the evolved psychological traits (a.k.a.
instincts) that influence our behavior are below our
level of conscious awareness; that is, often those
instincts lead to behavioral responses that are not
self-evident to us.
Average faces are attractive
Finding:
Average faces are
generally considered
more attractive.
Source: www.beautycheck.de
Evolutionary reason:
Genetic diversity is
generally associated
with better overall
health.
Implication:
Our brain
subconsciously
performs complex
computations of facial
attractiveness; the result
is a feeling that a face is
attractive.
Vertical distances seem longer
Finding:
People tend to
overestimate vertical
distances and
underestimate
horizontal distances.
Source: Jackson & Cormack (2008)
Evolutionary reason:
“… vertical … surfaces
present a navigation
risk … Falls
of a few meters produce
serious injuries […]”
Implication:
Our brain
subconsciously
performs biased
computations of length;
the result is a
perceptual distortion of
vertical distances.
Evolution of psychological traits
(Through natural selection; or survival advantage)
Fitness
(W)
The success
with which an
individual’s
genes are
passed on to
successive
generations.
Measured based
on the number of
surviving
offspring or
grand-offspring
of an individual.
Survival
success
(S)
The success of an
individual in keeping
alive in the presence of
adverse environmental
factors such as
pathogens and
predators. Can be
measured through the
age of an individual at
the time of death.
Ancient task
performance
(TA )
Psychological
trait
(P)
Genotype
(G)
Mental trait, or
instinct,
associated with
a genotype.
(Phenotypic
trait.)
Performance of
an individual in
an ancient task
such as hunting
or foraging.
Set of
interrelated
genes, with a
particular allele
configuration.
Evolved psychological traits today
Modern task
performance
(TM )
Performance of
an individual in
modern task
such as
searching for
information on
the Web.
Psychological
trait
(P)
Mental trait, or
instinct,
associated with
a genotype.
(Phenotypic
trait.)
Genotype
(G)
Set of
interrelated
genes, with a
particular allele
configuration.
Key assumption:
The modern task will be similar enough to the ancient task, which will hopefully lead
to observable effects associated with the evolved psychological trait P.
Example: Attention to colors
Survival
success
(S)
Fitness
(W)
Perf. foraging
for nutritious
fruits
(TA )
Attention to
colors
(P)
Other than black
and white.
Perf. searching
for information
on the Web
(TM )
Using Web
interfaces with
different degrees
of color use.
Attention to
colors
(P)
Genotype
(G)
Genotype
(G)
Evolution and correlation
Fitness
(W)
Survival
success
(S)
Ancient task
performance
(TA )
Psychological
trait
(P)
Genotype
(G)
It can be shown that, for the genotype G and the psychological trait P to evolve
through selection, the following equation must be satisfied:
Measures of
psychological trait P: 1
if trait is present; 0 if
trait is absent in
individual.
Measures of genotype
G: 1 if genotype is
present; 0 if genotype
is absent in individual.
Price’s covariance theorem
Price (1970) showed that for any phenotypic trait measured by Z to evolve through
selection in any population of individuals, the trait must satisfy the equation below:
Since the genotype of an individual is also part of the individual’s phenotype the
equation above can be re-written as:
The equation above can be re-written as shown below, in terms of the standardized
measures of W and G, which are referred to as w and g. This allows for the use of
the equation in the context of path analysis.
Price’s theorem and path analysis
The path model shown below depicts relationships among the standardized
measures of genotype, psychological trait, ancient task performance, survival
success, and fitness. The path coefficients are standardized partial regression
coefficients. For simplicity, error terms are not shown.
w
s
Path(w,s)
Path(s,tA)
tA
p
Path(tA,p)
g
Path(p,g)
The First Law of Path Analysis states that the covariance between any two variables
in a path model equals the sum of the products of all path coefficients in all paths
that connect the two variables. Since there is only one path connecting w and g, this
leads to the equation below:
Thus, Price’s theorem can be re-stated as:
Selection and correlation
The path model does not contain competing paths; that is, it does not have any
instance of multiple paths pointing to the same variable. Thus all of the path
coefficients are reduced to the corresponding correlation coefficients:
Correlations between standardized variables have the same values as the
correlations between the corresponding non-standardized variables, thus:
Notes:
•The correlation between fitness and survival success is always positive, because an
individual must be alive to procreate and pass on genes to the next generation.
•The correlation between psychological trait and genotype is also always positive,
because by definition the genotype codes for the psychological trait.
•Therefore, evolutionary theorizing often entails searching for a psychological trait and a
survival-related task performance attribute that could be correlated.
Survival threats and surprise
Let us assume that:
•The task under consideration is: avoiding survival threats after they are experienced for
the first time.
•In our evolutionary past, a common psychological element associated with experiencing
survival threats was a sense of surprise.
•In other words: Halloween was likely rare in our evolutionary past; if something
surprised one of our ancestors, it was probably bad news.
Question:
•What would be a good candidate for psychological trait that would enhance
performance in the above task?
Answer:
•Enhanced cognition within the temporal vicinity (a few minutes before and after) of
surprise events.
Surprise-enhanced cognition
Surprise events often occurred
in a given context, where there
are specific contextual
markers; for instance,
dangerous animals live in
ecological niches with
characteristic types of terrain
and vegetation.
Rock
formations
Vegetation
Venomous
snake
Enhanced
cognition
zone
Flashbulb memorization
• The phenomenon coined flashbulb
memorization (Brown & Kulik, 1977) has
puzzled researchers for years.
• The phenomenon is associated with the
observation that surprise events enhance the
memorization of contextual information
associated with those events.
• The enhancement involves memories of
contextual information acquired shortly (e.g., a
few minutes) before and after the surprise
event, in what could be called an enhanced
cognition zone.
Enhanced cognition zone
Snake appears and is taken away by heroic husband
Time 1
Time 2
Time 3
Time 4
Enhanced cognition zone
Time 5
Time 6
Web-based enhanced cognition
Snake screen
Module 1
Module 2
Module 3
Module 4
Enhanced cognition zone
Module 5
Module 6
The experimental task
• A Web-based knowledge communication experiment was
conducted with 186 student participants at a university.
• Two experimental conditions were used.
– A Web-based screen with a snake picture in attack position, and with a
snake hissing background noise, was used to create a simulated threat
in the treatment condition.
– The screen was shown for 10 seconds in between modules 3 and 4.
– The simulated threat was absent in the control condition.
• In both conditions the participants were asked to review
learning modules about “Incoterms”, presented to them as Web
pages with written content.
– The term “Incoterms” is an abbreviation for “International Commercial
Terms”, and refers to a body of standard terminology published by the
International Chamber of Commerce. The terminology is employed in
international trade contracts.
Participant viewing the web pages
Test taken after the experiment
• The participants were asked to take a
test covering the Incoterms in the 6
modules that they had just reviewed.
• The test contained three multiplechoice questions per module; each
question had four choices, of which
only one was correct.
Results of an ANOVA test
Other analyses and results
• Other parametric (t) and non-parametric (Mann-Whitney
U) comparisons of means tests.
– Same results.
• Generalized linear modeling (GLM) and analysis of
covariance (ANCOVA).
– The surprise-enhanced cognition effect seems to hold regardless
of gender, age, or scholastic ability.
• PLS-based analysis with latent variables added as control
variables.
– The surprise-enhanced cognition effect is still significant when we
control for: (a) motivation to do well in the experiment; (b)
perceived fear elicited by the simulated threat in the treatment
condition; and (c) perceived degree of distraction elicited by the
simulated threat in the treatment condition.
References
• Barkow, J.H., Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (Eds) (1992). The adapted mind:
Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. New York, NY:
Oxford University Press.
• Brown, R. & Kulik, J. (1977). Flashbulb memories. Cognition, 5(1), 73-99.
• Jackson, R.E., & Cormack, L.K. (2008). Evolved navigation theory and the
environmental vertical illusion. Evolution and Human Behavior, 29(5), 299304.
• Kock, N. (2004). The psychobiological model: Towards a new theory of
computer-mediated communication based on Darwinian evolution.
Organization Science, 15(3), 327-348.
• Kock, N., Chatelain-Jardón, R. and Carmona, J. (2008). An experimental
study of simulated Web-based threats and their impact on knowledge
communication effectiveness. IEEE Transactions on Professional
Communication, 51(2), 183-197.
• Price, G.R. (1970). Selection and covariance. Nature, 227(1), 520-521.
• Schutzwohl, A. (1998). Surprise and schema strength. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, 24(5), 11821199.
Thank you
Fear of snakes likely not innate
• Baby and toy cobra:
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqDxZhsr7bc&feature
• Baby and real cobra:
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agBMxX1SeJo
Time to fixation of mutations
(In diploid populations; time = number of generations;
N = population size; s = selective advantage)
• Positive impact on fitness
2/s ln(2N)
• Neutral impact on fitness
4N