Tag Archives: AI

Cases

How Stanford’s AI seminars ignite curiosity

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At Stanford University, the number of seminars available on campus is stunning. I chose to attend a few, and I noticed that many of them focus on artificial intelligence. From engineering to economics, finance, and supply chain management, AI is a topic of discussion across different fields.

For instance, at the engineering school, seminars explore technical advancements in AI, such as the priorities of organizations like OpenAI. In economics, the focus shifts to how the economic impact of AI should be measured, while finance seminars investigate whether adopting AI contributes to a firm’s financial value. In the area of supply chain management, discussions highlight how AI transforms global manufacturing processes, from component delivery to product assembly. These seminars offer insights into how each discipline approaches AI uniquely.

Repeated exposure to the AI-focused discussions has sparked my curiosity about technology. As a psychological experiment demonstrated long ago, repeated exposure to unknown stimuli such as Chinese characters leads to more positive attitudes toward them. As I continue to attend these seminars, my interest in AI and emerging technologies-hallmarks of Silicon Valley-continues to grow.

Likewise, Stanford students, surrounded by ongoing discussions, are likely to develop greater interest and a more positive attitude toward AI and technologies. The campus environment fosters enthusiasm for a transformative field.

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Reference

Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of personality and social psychology, 9(2p2), 1-27.

The hypothesis is offered that mere repeated exposure of the individual to a stimulus object enhances his attitude toward it. By “mere” exposure is meant a condition making the stimulus accessible to the individual’s perception. Support for the hypothesis consists of 4 types of evidence, presented and reviewed: (a) the correlation between affective connotation of words and word frequency; (b) the effect of experimentally manipulated frequency of exposure upon the affective connotation of nonsense words and symbols; (c) the correlation between word frequency and the attitude to their referents; (d) the effects of experimentally manipulated frequency of exposure on attitude. The relevance for the exposure-attitude hypothesis of the exploration theory and of the semantic satiation findings were examined.

Publications

How to unlock human potential by merging behavioral science and AI?

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Daeun Yoo and Jaewoo Joo. 2024. BI-CST: Behavioral Science-based Creativity Support Tool for Overcoming Design Fixation.. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS Companion ’24), July 01–05, 2024, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 5 pages.

Abstract

Design Fixation refers to the tendency to adhere to pre-existing ideas, which hinders innovative design solutions. This research explores the potential of LLM-powered Creativity Support Tools, the ’Behaviorally Informed Creativity Support Tool (BI-CST),’ to facilitate ideation and combat Design Fixation using ’Behavioral Science Theory.’ BI-CST assists in redefning problems and generating new ideas by presenting experimental fndings from Behavioral Sciences that challenge users’ initial concepts, thus providing a deeper understanding of real human behaviors. We will assign three groups to diferent conditions: one designing without generative AI support, one with open-ended generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT), and one using a model trained in behavioral science. We aim to compare the originality, practicality, and general quality of the designs to assess design fxation. This study addresses design fxation through an interdisciplinary approach combining design and behavioral science, aiming to expand users’ perspectives.

Keywords

creativity support tool, human AI collaboration, behavioral science, design fixation, generative AI

… Behavioral science, a sub field of psychology, aims to understand and predict people’s behaviors through scientific methods ranging from casual observation of daily life to systematic observation to minimize the effects of biases [22, 29]. Its research includes behavioral decision theory, which shows people’s heuristics and biases in judgment [9], and builds nudges that gently alter people’s decision making processes [27]. As this field targets problem-solving by understanding people’s psychology, efforts have been made to apply theories of behavioral science in the HCI field to change users’ behavior [13, 14, 19]. However, there has been limited research on incorporating behavioral science into Creativity Support to aid design processes. We assume that the scientific causal and systematic observational results about human behavior from behavioral science can serve as a ’nudge’ to assist users in gaining more diverse perspectives. (pg. 117)

… We hypothesize that participants using a non-behaviorally informed Creativity Support Tool (CST) in Condition B are likely to reinforce their existing heuristics, which could increase their design fixation. In contrast, participants in Condition C, who will be provided with behaviorally informed guidance, are expected to adopt new heuristics that help reduce their fixation on initial ideas. Specifically, we anticipate that the outputs in Condition A and Condition B will likely exhibit medium to high originality but may have low practicality. Conversely, outputs from Condition C are expected to show medium originality but high practicality, due to the application of evidence-based creative support derived from behavioral science research. (pg. 119)

Cases

If people avoid meeting with others, do marketers sell products online only?

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Nowadays people avoid meeting others. We could buy products through mobile phones and order food at screens inside restaurants. A recent virus outbreak even encourages us to stop shaking hands with strangers.

Ironically, the more we avoid meeting others, I believe, the easier others sell their products to us. When I visited Prezzemolo & Vitale, a local grocery store in Notting Hill in London, an employee brought a lump of meat on a board, cut it into thin slices, and passed them over to passers by. Interestingly, most of those who tried samples bought several pieces of different types of meat. I was not exception.

When he looked at me with a slice of meat, I inferred, he made an effort to approach me. This inference is rarely made when I stand in front of machines such as mobile phones or kiosks. I conclude that when we meet people and machines, we may have different inference: people make effort to come close to us whereas machines do not. This inferred effort may play a critical role in determining our next behavior such as buying a product.

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Reference 1

Morales, A. C. (2005). Giving firms an “E” for effort: Consumer responses to high-effort firms. Journal of Consumer Research, 31(4), 806–812.

This research shows that consumers reward firms for extra effort. More specifically, a series of three laboratory experiments shows that when firms exert extra effort in making or displaying their products, consumers reward them by increasing their willingness to pay, store choice, and overall evaluations, even if the actual quality of the products is not improved. This rewarding process is defined broadly as general reciprocity. Consistent with attribution theory, the rewarding of generally directed effort is mediated by feelings of gratitude. When consumers infer that effort is motivated by persuasion, however, they no longer feel gratitude and do not reward high-effort firms.

Effort not only dictates our behavior. It helps us enjoy what we do.

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Reference 2

Norton, M. I., Mochon, D., & Ariely, D. (2012). The “IKEA Effect”: When labor leads to love. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22(3), 453–460.

In four studies in which consumers assembled IKEA boxes, folded origami, and built sets of Legos, we demonstrate and investigate boundary conditions for the IKEA effect-the increase in valuation of self-made products. Participants saw their amateurish creations as similar in value to experts’ creations, and expected others to share their opinions. We show that labor leads to love only when labor results in successful completion of tasks; when participants built and then destroyed their creations, or failed to complete them, the IKEA effect dissipated. Finally, we show that labor increases valuation for both “do-it-yourselfers” and novices.