Tag Archives: Behavioral Science

“Husband daycare?” How a fishing trip became a free pass for wives

When I visited the Santa Cruz Wharf for the Woodies on the Wharf event, I saw a funny sign. It said:

Husband Daycare
Need time to yourself?
Need time to just relax?
Leave your husband with us!
Drop off as early as 6am Pick up at 3pm

This place is not a real daycare but a fishing and motorboat rental shop. Many men come here to enjoy fishing all day. But the sign is written for wives who could leave their husbands here and enjoy free time.

The same event, men fishing, can have two opposite meanings. One story is “men go fishing to have fun.” Another story is “wives get peace while husbands are at daycare.” Like Tom Sawyer convincing others to paint a fence for him, the value of fishing trip is constructed.

This idea was explained by a classic experimental study in which students were asked if they would attend a poetry recital for free. But before this, they received different questions. One group was first asked if they would attend to receive $2 (accept group). The other group was first asked if they would attend by paying $2 (pay group). Later, when both were asked if they would attend for free, only 8% of the accept group said yes, while 35% of the pay group said yes. This shows that value depends on how the event is framed.

We do not know the real value of an experience. Sometimes, we create that value based on the story we tell others.

***

Reference

Ariely, D., Loewenstein, G., & Prelec, D. (2006). Tom Sawyer and the construction of valueJournal of Economic Behavior & Organization60(1), 1-10.

This paper challenges the common assumption that economic agents know their tastes. After reviewing previous research showing that valuation of ordinary products and experiences can be manipulated by non-normative cues, we present three studies showing that in some cases people do not have a pre-existing sense of whether an experience is good or bad-even when they have experienced a sample of it.

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

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)