Measuring Social Motivation: How can we obtain more holistic cultural profiles?

Posted on August 21, 2016 by joanakompa • Tagged Albert Bandura, cross-cultural psychology, cultural profiling, Hofstede, social motivation, Vygotsky • Leave a comment

Illustration by Florian Bayer ‘African Governance Architecture’ (World Illustration Awards, 2016)

Endowed with language and reason, we strive to persevere

We are social creatures long before we are individuals (Vygotsky & Cole, 1978). We depend on our families, our personal relationships, peers, communities, our culture and society to survive and evolve. The more complex the society we create, the more elaborate the social scaffold, the more options open up for its members to thrive in.

Plato still assumed the metaphysical existence of a ‘telos’, an intrinsic deterministic force that would drive people to build states in order to realise the good life. Aristotle did not go as far and took the more pragmatic view that, despite all suffering in life, people still hope for joy and happiness. The prerequisite to achieving happiness in life was for Aristotle represented by the idea that people build states by virtue of being capable of language and reason (zoon logon echon). On the downside, the failure to establish a social contract, as Hobbes described in his ‘Leviathan’, was synonymous with the regress into tribal communities, concluding in a war of all against all (‘bellum omnium contra omnes’) in what he called a state of nature. The most critical incentives for social motivation appear, in a philosophical light, in the form of goal-directed incentives for cooperation versus the threat of violent social conflict and the even grimmer prospect of perishing from the face of the earth.

What are human needs and how can we conceptualise them?

Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of needs’ (Maslow, 1954), builds on the intuition that social-physiological needs of survival serve as prerequisite fulfilling higher-order needs (mainly love, self-esteem, and self-actualization). Other psychologists, on many accounts, criticised Maslow’s hierarchy. One of the critical arguments states that individual self-realization does not necessarily identify the pinnacle of human need fulfilment. Self-realization may not play a significant role in collectivist cultures which are governed by collective well-being and the fulfilment of group norms (Hofstede, 1984). The utilitarian idea of the greatest good for the greatest number would be another example of an alternate goal. Not only do cultures create unique hierarchies, but people express different types of needs, for example depending on their age. Children need love the most, adolescents typically look to build self-esteem and older people may look for safety and financial security (Erikson, 1950, 1968; Goebel et al., 1981). A generalised assumption of universal needs fitting people of all ages, personalities and cultures may empirically hard, if not impossible, to prove. Still, Maslow’s model provides the useful intuition that social constructs build on the satisfaction of interdependent clusters of needs.

The underlying hypothesis: The complexity of modern societies requires new types of social regulation

The underlying psychological hypothesis regarding modern societies states that socialised individuals emerge via a plethora of developmental pathways. In contrast to traditional and tribal communities, members of modern societies need to internalise and develop new cognitive-behavioral skills in order to manage higher social complexity. This is how individuality, personal responsibility, higher order thinking and metacognitive abilities emerge.

Due to their dependence on environmental conditions and changes, human needs emerge as adaptive processes and are, as such, driven by probabilistic Bayesian logic. For this reason, human needs do not seem to evolve along any teleological hierarchy as suggested by Maslow. A developmentally-open approach provides, in this light, an unbiased starting point on how to measure social motivation within a cross-cultural context. But firstly, human needs would need to be defined in an empirically measurable manner, assuming that our underlying philosophical assumptions are sound, and secondly, we need to be able to measure need-satisfaction within social context.

Photographs above: Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of needs’ still serves as a valid intuition when looking at the relation between income and need satisfaction, such as covering basic needs of survival versus the creation of new luxury needs. Beyond well-being, monetary resources relate to global Self-image, life opportunities as well as social power and influence.

In order to avoid arbitrary metaphysical assumptions of universal needs, we may look for generalizable, evidence-based criteria upon which a theoretical consensus can build. Cultural diversification, we could argue, scaffolds needs of relatedness, competence and autonomy. Diversification is based on variations how people use their brains differently based on intrapsychic, environmental and behavioural determinants. Human development of cognitive, affective and behavioural faculties is malleable, allowing societies and cultures to branch into multiple realisations. Human needs appear, in this light, more like inclinations that are scaffold by the social lifeworld. We may take a further step back.

The developmental potential of human agency starts from earliest development. For example, babies in Africa, Asia or Europe cry differently as they pick up the tonality of their cultural surroundings (Wermke et al., 2016). The culture-dependent internalization of sociocultural norms has been thoroughly researched, such as in in Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1977; Grusec 1992), Social Identity Theory (Haslam, 2001; Tajfel & Turner, 1986) and cross-cultural psychology (Hofstede, 2001; Nisbett & Miyamoto, 2005; Triandis & Gelfand, 1998). Bandura’s argument from Social Cognitive Theory is that, despite all socio-economic and cultural determinants, people always bring in their personal, intrapsychic determinants into the mix (Bandura, 2016), which arguably plays a larger role in individualistic cultures. This is, socio-cultural and individual needs can collide.

Beyond single-group identification, a person can assume social memberships among multiple groups (Hogg & Vaughan, 2002). Overlapping group-loyalties determine a person’s motivation to comply with existing ingroup norms, to mediate arising outgroup conflicts and to establish forms of distributed commitments across groups. In modern societies, ingroup identification is no more sufficient as a single criterion for managing social life since multiple group memberships and overlapping group identities have become the norm, rather than the exception. There is the needs to fit in, the need to stay truthful to oneself, the need to arrive at one’s own conclusions but also the need to stay loyal to one’s group. Needs appear deeply conflicted with themselves.

The problem of need-based theories: innate, driving needs or open developmental pathways?

The term ‘needs’ seems peculiar when used to describe social motivation since we typically associate needs, in common language use, with physiological needs, something that we inherently require but that is created by our organism and emerges independent of volition. When, e.g., Self-determination Theory (SDT) talks about the needs to relate, to develop competence and autonomy (Deci & Ryan, 2012; Deci & Ryan, 2000), we could substitute the term ‘needs’ by the expression ‘probabilistic clusters of processes (leading to outcomes of empowered autonomy, increased competence and improved social relations) as outcomes of optional developmental pathways’. The case is similar to Maslow’s example. For example, a person may feel the desire to develop competence and autonomy, but the involved social costs (by forces of relatedness and sharing limited resources with others) may keep him or her from taking the envisioned path. Different needs can compete with each other and they can reinforce as much as inhibit each other. At times, our vocabulary is limited. In Problem-based Learning (PBL), for example, Prof. Barrows, my colleagues and I had lengthy discussions about the negative ‘feel’ of the word ‘problem’. We tried many alternatives. ‘Challenged-based Learning’, for example, sounded plain wrong and implied a different focus, so we stuck to ‘Problem-based Learning’. A ‘need’ could also imply a personal desire, but may not simultaneously embrace the ‘need’ for social respect and recognition, unless we specify. Important for now is to note that ‘needs’, as employed by SDT, is not identical with our common language use of the word, but signifies a placeholder for optional developmental pathways – the path to autonomy, to relatedness and to competence. We should not forget that people also negate individual autonomy, relatedness and competence in cases where they regard these ‘needs’ as a threat to their communities, privilege or way of life.

From conceptualising to measuring social motivation

In their paper ‘How to Measure Motivation: A Guide for the Experimental Social Psychologist’, Touré-Tillery and Fishback (2014) advocate to differentiate between outcome-focused motivation (“getting it done”) and process-focused motivation (doing it happily” or “doing it right”). As in many experimental approaches, behaviour is operationalized by the speed participants pursue a goal, task-performance (the better participants perform, the more motivated they indicate) and by the preferential choices they make. The authors suggest differentiating between intrinsic motivation, driven by enjoyment and interest with the focus on process, and means-focused, goal-oriented motivation with the focus on outcomes, such as e.g., finishing a project. Although we may see the merit in being able to analyse, e.g., an individual maladaptive pattern in learning processes this way, the social dimension of the concept remains unclear.

Measuring social motivation entails, by definition, investigating interaction effects between individuals, smaller groups and large populations as well as between-group interactions. In order to address effects of social psychology, the authors would need to extend their approach and take, e.g., individual- versus group-induced motivation into account (such as motivation with or without superordinate goals), or to compare e.g., the behaviour of competing groups.

There is certainly not a single ‘correct’ way of measuring social motivation. Methods of analysis range from qualitative studies among small groups to traditional, tried-and-tested statistics and data analysis of representative groups to big data models provided by computer science when it comes to very large sample sizes. What matters, in any case, is the relevance and meaningfulness of research: Does research help people to govern their lives? Do findings provide a deeper understanding how technology transforms our social identity? Can we predict and prevent harmful social behaviour? How can we support inclusive social norms, control social aggression and mediate social conflicts? How can we gain insight into issues such as bias correction and stereotype formation?

**What does really drive people?**

(1) Ideologies and group egoism

The world’s cultures, independent of size and influence, started their foundation in religion and spiritual systems. People grow up in their respective traditions that are practiced and internalised. In Western societies, we can add non-theist traditions such as rationalism, liberalism and socialism to the list of mental constructs that provide goal-directed motivation for people to act upon. Such mental systems, in short ideologies, are psychologically rich constructs since they combine affective, cognitive and behavioural determinants. The question is how salient such motivation appears within a culture, inclusive of ingroup variance. Besides official ideologies, it is complementary folk theories about the world, ranging from superstitious beliefs to common sense, that influence peoples’ judgment. Cultural ideologies are passed on by tradition. Generally, ideologies are internalised and become to this extent, according to the typology of SDT (Ryan, Kuhl & Deci, 1997), introjected regulation (see 2b): People identify with their cultural normative beliefs and do not merely act upon them for the sake of transactional compliance. Ideologies refer to the cognitive construction of mental worlds. The advantage to methodologically separate ideology from introjected regulation is that similar ideology (e.g., Buddhism or Islam) can entail very different cultural practice when it comes to managing social affect. Ideology extends to economic attitudes and behaviour since groups act on the premise of underlying salient beliefs justifying ingroup versus outgroups interests.

(2) Internalized regulation

(2a) Social norms: The fabric of society

Social norms constitute the most significant force of driving group behaviour. Social norms represent the expectations that others have about us as much as we expect others to comply within a socially predictable pattern of behaviour. Albert Bandura, e.g., is most commonly known as the researcher who conducted the ‘Bobo the Clown’ experiment, but few know about his psychological interventions of changing social norms in Africa in AIDS/ HIV education and preventing female genital mutilation. Much social work today, e.g., projects conducted by the UN, is based on understanding and modifying local social norms (Mackie et al., 2015).

(2b) Introjected regulation: Honour, Face and Shame

Social norms and ideologies overlap in collectivist cultures, described in SDT as introjected regulation (Ryan et al, 2000). Examples are honor-shame cultures of the Mediterranean and the Middle East as well as face-based cultures in Asia. In such cultures, norms evoke strong personal consequences for the individual in terms of sanctions by shame or affective rewards for maintaining collective honour and ‘face’. Methodologically researchers need to decide to which degree ideologies, introjected regulation and social norms overlap, this is to measure their degree of congruence. Results can provide useful insights on the degree of collective-heteronomous versus personal-autonomous regulation. It is important to note that concepts of honour, face and shame relate to moral affect, whereby ideology refers to the cognitive construction of the mental world.

(3) Integrated regulation: Intergroup consensus and cooperation

People’s ability to interact with outgroups and to integrate their personal perspectives with those of others is described in SDT as integrated regulation (Ryan et al, 2000). In a globalised world that is building on highly interconnected economies, groups don’t operate in isolation anymore. Integrated regulation demands the accommodation of outgroup perspectives and, unlike ideological and identified regulation, requires the modification of people’s cognitive models as it entails the negotiation, compromise, consensus and maintenance of social contracts with outgroups.

(4) Amotivation and metacognitive control: High dependence versus high independence

Besides these three mainstream types of social motivation, behaviour is potentially driven by two other types of regulation. One type is amotivation (characterized by the lack of motivation and absence of intentionality), such as e.g., in the case of forced labour or imposed rules of a majority onto a minority. In such cases, motivation is exercised as social control and it is typically regulated by external forces. The last type, arguably most significant for a society’s progress, are metacognitive competencies. They describe a population’s capacity to reflect upon their collectively held assumptions about the justification of social norms beyond simply abiding by them. By exercising metacognitive evaluation, people are able to reflect upon the consequences of their actions, motivated individually (a) ‘due to myself’ (individual metacognition) as well as socially (b) by keeping others in mind, being motivated ‘due to others’ (social metacognition) (Kim et al., 2013). Metacognition was originally defined as the ‘thinking about thinking’, (Flavell, 1979), meaning in social context the distributed ability among a given population to regulate cognition.

An example of how a spectral analysis of a population’s social motivation could be conducted is visualised in Figure 1 in the hypothetical comparison between two populations.

Figure 1: The analysis of various types of social motivation provides a more coherent picture of a population’s socio-psychological profile. What would the illustrated profile tell us?

How would Hofstede’s categories fare in such a new model?

Hofstede’s 6D model (Hofstede, 2001) measures the parameters of cultural power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation and indulgence. Individualism can be assessed by the presence of personal norms (versus social norms) and individual metacognition as a typical trait of individualist cultures. Power distance correlates with ideology and, arguably, a combined measure would be more insightful since we could draw inferences between official ideological agendas and actual socio-economic and political hierarchies, inclusive of cultural practice (introjected regulation). Such triangulated measure would describe more adequately what people think, how they behave (cultural practice) and how they feel about social interaction within their culture. Long-term orientation is related to planning and can be subsumed under metacognitive regulation, which applies equally for uncertainty avoidance. This leaves only the cultural clusters of masculinity-femininity and indulgence to further discussion. Below an example comparing British and Thai culture according to Hofstede (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Comparing British and Thai culture. Source: Geert Hofstede Centre (2016), available at https://geert-hofstede.com

Hofstede’s assumption of feminine-masculine cultural differences is methodologically doubtful since gender roles (as the main determinant) are by themselves defined by culture, leading to a circular argument: In more gender-equal societies, differences dissolve, rendering the premise of salient masculinity-femininity categories unreliable. Hofstede writes that “A low score (Feminine) on the dimension means that the dominant values in society are caring for others and quality of life. A Feminine society is one where the quality of life is the sign of success and standing out from the crowd is not admirable. The fundamental issue here is what motivates people, wanting to be the best (Masculine) or liking what you do (Feminine).” (Hofstede, 2016).

The association with women as predominantly caring and men as predominantly achieving appears to be a biased and outdated assumption for modern pluralistic societies as much as for many traditional-collectivist cultures. On a cultural level, it would be more useful to measure gender-roles in association with cultural practices (e.g., equal access to education, equal pay and rights etc.) contrasted against prevailing ideology since these factors relate more meaningfully to social motivation, attitudes, behaviour and the gap between official ideological agendas and social reality.

Photograph above: A woman in Congo carrying firewood. Across cultures, women care for their children and simultaneously ensure the family’s survival by hard work. How would Hofstede’s categories of masculinity versus femininity make sense in such cases? Source: AP/ Jerome Delay

Summary

Given that people’s behaviour is based on socially-constructed reasons, it is doubtful that experimental social psychology alone is able to address complex, real-world problems within a single step. What works under controlled conditions in a laboratory still requires validation in social context. In order to obtain a comprehensive picture of a population’s social motivation types, research would need to take into consideration instances of amotivation, ideological motivation, social norms, introjected regulation, integrated regulations as well as metacognitive competencies. Most types of social regulation work heteronomously, seen from an individual’s perspective, since regulation is evoked via ingroup dynamics and not by personal agency. It is only integrated regulation and metacognitive regulation that requires groups to adjust their mindsets according to changing environmental conditions. Hofstede’s 6D model could be redefined more meaningfully by collapsing the criteria of uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation under (well-researched) metacognitive competencies. Categories such as femininity and masculinity inevitably evoke gender-based bias since the interpretation of these categories is by itself culture-dependent.

References

Bandura, Albert (1977). Social Learning Theory. Oxford, England: Prentice-Hall.

Bandura, A. (2016). Moral disengagement: How people do harm and live with themselves. New York: Worth Publishers, Macmillan Learning

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2012). Motivation, personality, and development within embedded social contexts: An overview of self-determination theory. In R. M. Ryan (Ed.), Oxford handbook of human motivation (pp. 85-107). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195399820.001.0001

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The ‘what’ and ‘why’ of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227-268.

Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and society. New York: Norton.

Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. New York: Norton.

Flavell, J. H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive–developmental inquiry. American Psychologist, 34(10), 906-911. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.34.10.906

Goebel, B. L.; Brown, D. R. (1981). Age differences in motivation related to Maslow’s need hierarchy. Developmental Psychology. 17: 809–815. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.17.6.80

Grusec, J. (1992). Social learning theory and developmental psychology: The legacies of Robert Sears and Albert Bandura. Developmental Psychology. 28 (5): 776–786. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.28.5.776

Haslam, A. S. (2001), Psychology in Organizations – The Social Identity Approach, Sage Publications Ltd, London.

Hofstede Centre (2016). Strategy-Culture-Change. Retrieved August 22, 2016 from https://geert-hofstede.com/the-hofstede-centre.html

Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s Consequences: comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and organizations across nations (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Hofstede, G. (1984). The cultural relativity of the quality of life concept. Academy of Management Review. 9 (3): 389–398. doi:10.5465/amr.1984.427965

Hogg, M.A. & Vaughan, G.M. (2002). Social Psychology (3rd ed. ) London: Prentice Hall.

Kim, Y. R., Park, M. S., Moore, T. J., & Varma, S. (2013). Multiple levels of metacognition and their elicitation through complex problem-solving tasks. The Journal Of Mathematical Behavior, 32(3), 377-396.

Mackie, G., Moneti, F., Denny, E., & Shakya, H. (2015). What are Social Norms? How are They Measured? WORKING PAPER. UNICEF/UCSD Center on Global Justice, University of California, San Diego

Maslow, A (1954). Motivation and personality. New York, NY: Harper

Nisbett, R.; Miyamoto, Y. (2005). The influence of culture: holistic versus analytic perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 9 (10): 467–473. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.08.004

Ryan, R. M., Legate, N., Niemiec, C. P., & Deci, E. L. (2012). Beyond illusions and defense: Exploring the possibilities and limits of human autonomy and responsibility through self-determination theory. In P. R. Shaver & M. Mikulincer (Eds.), Meaning, mortality, and choice: The social psychology of existential concerns (pp. 215-233). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. doi: 10.1037/13748-012

Tajfel, H. and Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of inter-group behavior. In S. Worchel and L. W. Austin (eds.), Psychology of Intergroup Relations. Chicago: Nelson-Hall

Touré-Tillery, M. & Fishback, A. (2014). How to Measure Motivation: A Guide for the Experimental. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 8/7 (2014): 328–341, 10.1111/spc3.12110

Triandis, H. C. & Gelfland, M. J. (1998). Converging measurement of horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 118-128.

Vygotsky, L. S., & Cole, M. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Wermke, K; Teiser, J.; Yovsi, E.; Kohlenberg, P.J.; Wermke, P.; Robb, M.; Keller, H. & Lamm, B. (2016) Fundamental frequency variation within neonatal crying: Does ambient language matter? Speech, Language and Hearing, dx.doi.org/10.1080/2050571X.2016.1187903

Emerging Social Design & Innovation: What does it take to Make the World a Better Place?

Posted on July 22, 2016 by joanakompa • Tagged problem-solving, social design, social motivation, Social networks, sustainability • Leave a comment

Picture: A BRAC community health worker conducting a survey in the Korail slum, Bangladesh. Most NGOs are engaged in positive social change. Where is social innovation design different?

The following comment was inspired by the Design & Social Innovation Symposium Asia-Pacific (DESIAP) held at TCDC, Bangkok, July 2016 in coordination with Northumbria University, Newcastle and RMIT University.

PDF Version Emerging Social Design – Joana Kompa 2016

Introduction: Our Traditional Notion of a Designer

Designers, so our folk understanding, create beautiful and useful things for everyday life. Designers are responsible for graphics, the appearance, and functionality of consumer products, pleasant interior designs, innovative digital media and so on. In short, designers make marketing work and they assist brands to become successful. This is how designers find themselves professionally sandwiched between corporate clients and target-grouped consumers. In this light, the work of traditional designers renders instrumental to economic development, but not necessarily social progress.

Social Design Philosophy: Empathy, Sustainability, and Interdisciplinary Approach

When it comes to, what I label temporarily, as ‘social innovation design’ (or ‘social design’ in short) this perspective turns 180 degrees. Here, in a vivid and innovative space of their own, designers work on issues such as integrating vulnerable populations into society, revealing the narratives behind our fair-trade coffee via digital geo-tracking, designing combined care services for impoverished elderly, strengthening local communities by helping them trade their products or helping local schools to improve their pedagogical and academic quality. Most of such design initiatives, similar to projects regularly featured in TED-Talks, represent variations of social design. Social design, broadly speaking, develops design-based interventions that empower and enrich the lives of individuals and communities.

Three key concepts appear to drive social design. The central idea is empathy, the identification with the other. Design development is guided by the philosophy of empowering communities and vulnerable individuals to live in dignity. The second idea is the realisation that lifeworld resources, social and natural, are limited and any kind of development only makes sense once it becomes sustainable. This argument entails the consequential notion that design development should not be conducted at somebody else’s expense. To outsource the social costs and toxicity of development has become non-sustainable in a globalised and interconnected world (Wallerstein, 2004). Thirdly, by dealing with complex systems, social innovation design requires taking a multi-disciplinary approach by inviting most diverse faculties to the table such as e.g., design, sociology, social psychology, engineering and information technology. Anything that is man-made, physical or conceptual, and that has consequences for groups of people can be considered as social design.

Unlike our folk understanding of design, social design is not morally neutral, it is ethical. Social designers are aware of the consequences that cultural-economic power hierarchies and governmental policies have for people in real life. Social design asks not only about the benefit of design for a small group, but it includes the principle of non-maleficence, the intention to prevent harm to people. This excludes the use of exploitative relationships and an unfair distribution of social costs. Ideally, from a developmental- and social psychology perspective, social design assists peoples’ development over their entire lifetime, both in their individual and collective agency (Bandura, 2006).

How scientific should designers become when addressing social systems?

Design thinking and scientific thinking share similar notions when it comes to research. Without evidence-based research, there can be no efficient design. Solutions are, after all, developed and not assumed. Designers are not as rigorous as scientists are when it comes to research methodology (thinking of elaborate statistical analysis for example), and they rarely employ explicit theoretical frameworks. It is suggested in the following that designers and scientists would benefit greatly if they would meet somewhere in the middle. If social innovation design is bound to succeed beyond grassroots experiments it can only convince official decision makers when the employed methodology is transparent and can be replicated when it is not arbitrary on one hand, but accommodates the diversity of design approaches on the other.

One problem, predominantly in contemporary Anglo-Saxon science, is the dominance of quantitative research. The great majority of peer-reviewed articles features research based on quantitative data analysis, whereby qualitative- and mixed research are rare by comparison and often frowned upon. For example, in health services, a mere 3% of published papers consist of mixed studies. Quantitative articles accounted for 91% and qualitative studies for only 6% of all publications (Wisdom et al., 2012). Besides traditional stereotypes of numbers being more useful, ‘objective’ and reliable, against some evidence to the contrary, qualitative research has a hard stand. One of the reasons is that when dealing with fellow human beings, researchers need to develop complex soft-skills. Unlike, for example, particle physicists, social scientists cannot pretend to be mere onlookers on objectively measurable processes when peoples’ lives and well-being is at stake. Another reason for the paucity of good qualitative research might be that training a student in data analysis is far easier than conducting training in qualitative research, which depends heavily on human resources and the transfer of social- and communicative skills. But qualitative research may be just one of the key ingredients that we need in social design.

Good research design needs to be trustworthy in order to gain public recognition. This entails that research can be replicated, that the processing of social data can be audited and the coding of qualitative data is conducted in a scientific manner, e.g., by employing inter-coder reliability, adequate data sampling strategies and by developing proper interview protocols (Charmaz, 2008; Hill, 2012; Wertz et al., 2011). Qualitative scientific research models, such as case studies or Grounded Theory are cooperative in nature and furthermore offer designers a theoretical lens (Creswell, 2013) to frame design perspectives more accurately. Explicit frameworks help avoid biases via theoretical bracketing and careful reflective practice, which is critical to cross-cultural research. A scientifically-guided methodology is key to public recognition and credibility when it comes to defending design applications in follow-up discourse, simply because designers can prove to the wider public that solution development was grounded in good reasons and solid inferences.

Operationalizing Sustainability: A Hypothetical Model

Qualitative factors play a major role in social design since we want to know how people feel before and after design interventions, how design solutions change people’s environmental and social perceptions and attitudes. On the other hand, we need to investigate peoples’ networks, the social scaffolding in which design development takes place. Two factors are of particular interest to social design research, which is (a) the social network structures affected by a design intervention and (b) the change of experienced quality in human relations within a network, before and after an intervention. This approach suggests a mixed research model based on social network analysis as well as cognitive-behavioral constructivism.

Within a combined qualitative and quantitative model, sustainability can be operationalized as the equilibrium between two unsustainable states:

(1) A non-sustainable qualitative state is a state where a small number of actors enjoy highly meaningful relations, but the sparse distribution of these relations cannot evoke normative power within the wider population. (2), By contrast, a non-sustainable quantitative state is a state where relations are widely distributed among the population, but they are not experienced as meaningful or worthwhile enough to be maintained. Sustainability emerges within the Goldilocks zone where meaningful human relations are shared among a large-enough number of members (Bicchieri, 2006), allowing for human empowerment to emerge as a normative expectation. The hypothetical operationalization of sustainability is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Operationalizing Sustainability: How are design interventions themselves sustainable?

The Implications of Social Networks for Human Relationships

I shall briefly illustrate the relevance for an integrated qualitative-quantitative (QUAL/ QUAN) approach from a social psychology perspective. The underlying assumption and research argument is that reciprocal interaction effects govern QUAL- and QUAN factors, meaning that the structure of a social network has as much as an influence on human relations as relations and social motivation affect the network structure in return.

Applying the motivational model of Self-determination Theory (SDT) (Deci & Ryan, 2012), social network types can be mapped to social motivation. For example, in a hierarchical society or group (1), as illustrated in Figure 2 below, it is more likely that members govern their cognition and behaviour according to religious or political ideology, such as in feudal societies, or based on folk theories such as in tribal and indigenous communities. Strong ingroup identities (2) are typically based on rigid, socially exclusive norms. Independent groups tend to exclude outgroups, reward ingroup compliance and punish deviations from social norms. In SDT, this type of social motivation is described as introjected regulation. Examples are collectivist honour cultures of the Middle East or Asian cultures where saving and maintaining face is of importance.

The moment groups cooperate (3), they acknowledge their differing interests but also promote shared superordinate goals, described as integrated regulation. Finally, in modern and highly interconnected groups and societies (4), social regulation is facilitated by inclusive social norms (‘identified regulation’) and their corresponding metacognitive justification. As a consequence of denser interconnectedness, higher levels of mutually integrated perspectives free individual members from heteronomous social regulation types, resulting in the emergence of individualistic cultures. Social designers need to be aware of such cultural differences, not only because people display different cultural attitudes and norms that deserve respect, but because local phenomenology evolves co-dependent with social network structures. The way we see the world is largely determined by the way we have learned to see it from others through deeply embedded social learning processes (Bandura, 1977).

Figure 2: Network structures and corresponding social motivation types

To this argument, network structures intrinsically determine social motivation and vice versa. QUAL/QUAN co-dependency supports the call for innovative new data collection and processing methodologies. This extended understanding of methodological flexibility reaches beyond traditional statistics (without necessarily replacing them) and embraces in addition research models of computer science such as, e.g., Bayesian networks, which are more sensitive to integrating the measurement of complex qualitative changes.

Case Studies in Design from a Scientific Perspective

A merely scientific view based on statistics might be at odds with design ethics. For example, if a problem is unique or non-representative of a larger population, does this entail that minorities and individuals are not worthy of the provision of a design solution?

On the other hand, there are critical scientific questions that designers should ask when dealing with social topics, such as, e.g. how are a design solutions socially relevant on individual and group level? What is their human merit? Which are the relationships and variables of interest? Do we need a large-n case study? Is the methodological approach cross-sectional, longitudinal or within-case? Can findings create a hypothesis? How can we discover causal pathways within dysfunctional systems? To which extent shall we explore the driving variables and how? By identifying the causes that create and support particular processes, can we replicate process outcomes? (Elman et al., 2016)

The Future of Interdisciplinary Teams

The greatest limitation of many current social design projects seems to lie in the isolated ad hoc employment of methodologies. Although design thinking follows intuitively the same logical path of procedural problem solving as scientific investigation, non-standardized approaches obscure the development of open solution development. Design solutions remain, to this extent, individualised projects of the designer, but they do not necessarily offer help to colleagues who may look for evidence-based, context-transferable templates for their own local problems. A more structured approach for the framing of design problems, data collection, and documented social data processing is therefore required. The blurring of lines between traditional NGOs and dedicated design teams might turn out mutually beneficial, with NGOs providing established local infrastructure and designers providing innovative concepts and specialised expertise.

The future of social design lies in gaining competencies by employing interdisciplinary teams. Social designers may assume the role of team facilitators, supporting their design team by reflective practice and responsible project management. This entails familiarity and experience in tutoring and coaching teams within problem-based learning scenarios.

Social design is certainly still in its infant stages while the enormous motivation of designers from all over the world to contribute to positive social change is both encouraging and commendable. With some patience and hard work, social design may become our brightest hope to solve local and global problems with pragmatic confidence.

Summary

Strengths of social innovation design

Empathetic, motivated by ethical societal change
Interdisciplinary openness
Guided by the idea of social and environmental sustainability
Creative and innovative approach

Current weaknesses of social innovation design

Lack of standardised and reliable methodology leads to arbitrary outcomes despite procedural problem-solving, resulting in limited meta-contextual usefulness and transferability of design solutions
Dealing with vulnerable populations requires adhering to professional ethical guidelines and needs to be approved by official ethics boards. Professional ethical practices, such as obtaining informed consent or ensuring the privacy of data need to be part of standard research and solution implementation procedures
No theory creation due to a lack of standardised qualitative methodology
Mixed QUAL/ QUAN-methodologies to address sustainability still need to be developed

References

Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall.

Bandura, A. (2006). Toward a Psychology of Human Agency. Perspectives On Psychological Science, 1(2), 164-180. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2006.00011.x

Bicchieri, C. (2006). The grammar of society: The nature and dynamics of social norms. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Charmaz, K. (2008). Constructing grounded theory, a practical guide through qualitative analysis. Sage Publications Ltd.

Creswell, J. W. (2013). Qualitative inquiry & research design: Choosing among five approaches. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.

Elman, C., Gerring, J. , & Mahoney, J. (2016). Case Study Research: Putting the Quant Into the Qual. Sociological Methods And Research, 45(3), 375-391. doi:10.1177/0049124116644273

Hill, C. E. (2012). Consensual qualitative research: A practical resource for investigating social science phenomena. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Wallerstein, I. (2004), WORLD-SYSTEMS ANALYSIS, in World System History , [Ed. George Modelski], Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), Developed under the Auspices of the UNESCO, Eolss Publishers, Oxford ,UK, [http://www.eolss.net]

Wertz, F.J., Charmaz, K., McMullen, L.M., Josselson, R., Anderson, R. & McSpadden, E. (2011) Five Ways of Doing Qualitative Analysis: Phenomenological Psychology, Grounded Theory, Discourse Analysis, Narrative Research, and Intuitive Inquiry. New York: The Guilford Press.

Wisdom, J. P., Cavaleri, M. A., Onwuegbuzie, A. J., & Green, C. A. (2012). Methodological Reporting in Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Health Services Research Articles. Health Services Research, 47(2), 721–745. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6773.2011.01344.x

Defining Human Agency: Towards an Interdependent Model of Human Autonomy

Posted on June 18, 2016 by joanakompa • Tagged Accountable agency, Albert Bandura, Authentic identity, Habermas, Human Agency, Human Autonomy, Interdependent Model of Human Agency, Moral autonomy, Personal autonomy, Ryan and Deci, Self Determination Theory, Social autonomy • Leave a comment

Illustration by Jim Tsinganos (IA Illustration Awards, 2015): Which is my authentic Self?

PDF Version: Defining Human Autonomy, Kompa, J., 2016

Introduction: Beyond money, what makes us truly happy and free?

How could I argue with a Nobel Prize winner? I admire Daniel Kahneman’s work, not only his contributions to behavioural economics but also his recent work on wellbeing and happiness. Kahneman demonstrated that high income improves the evaluation of life, but not necessarily emotional well-being (Kahneman & Deaton, 2010). On the others side, the lack of money can create considerable misery. I had three critical extending thoughts on his well-supported study. The first was that the investigation was limited to addressing individual well-being and life evaluation of a population. In collectivist cultures, for example, group identities and their social positioning play a significant role in perceived collective well-being, not merely income.

Secondly, instead of money we could place general lifeworld resources, e.g., access to healthcare, decent housing, childcare and education for the public. In cultures that offer high-quality public resources, such as e.g., Scandinavian countries, income inequalities are moderated and lesser income is not tantamount to sliding into poverty and misery.

The third thought was that what makes people happy or unhappy is equally dependent on the degree to which they are able to govern their lives, their degree of autonomy. Money is related, but only part of the story. Life satisfaction measures are limited to referring to outcomes that have accumulated over many years. Rational agency, by contrast, represents the ability to create desired futures and to enjoy access to options for making relevant life decisions. Challenges to our agency appear at every step of our biography. To find oneself in the driver’s seat of life appears equally important to well-being as income. People become increasingly unhappy the moment they are marginalised, disempowered and when they are forced against their will to deal with discriminating conditions, rather than creating their own. This Blog entry investigates human agency and its self-regulating structure. It asks about the critical key ideas that constitute autonomous human life.

Albert Bandura’s concept of an ‘Agentic Psychology’ (Bandura, 2006) and Self-Determination Theory (SDT) (Ryan & Deci, 2012) belong to the most influential approaches in contemporary psychology to position human autonomy at the core of scientific research. It is argued in the following that although current theory and research rest on valid intuitions and solid findings regarding human autonomy, an extended framework is required to offer a more socially-coherent understanding of human agency. By exploring the concept of autonomy proposed by philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas, it is investigated how an intersubjective approach to autonomy can provide additional insights for psychological theory. It is argued that Habermas’ concept of human autonomy implies fundamental psychological competencies which cannot be conceptually separated from cognitive faculty when dealing with historically and culturally grown social identities.

Keywords: autonomous versus heteronomous social regulation, private autonomy, social autonomy, moral autonomy, accountable agency, authentic identity

1. Where our folk understanding of autonomy fails

People’s naïve understanding of autonomy entails that we can lead our own life according to our will, according to what we want for ourselves, free of material deprivation and independent of external obligations, governmental control and social pressure. This understanding of private autonomy, as it has been originally framed by Locke and Hobbes, is still the dominant view of modern liberalism and libertarianism.

Supporting the libertarian definition of autonomy as individual independence, Markus and Kitayama’s (1991) influential concept of group-independent (individualistic) versus group-interdependent (collectivistic) cultures defines that Western cultures promote individual independence and separateness of others, whereby Asian, African or Middle-Eastern cultures, prioritise family- and group obligations over individual freedom.

Ryan and Deci (2006) disagree with this idea vehemently and remark that by not differentiating between autonomy and individual independence, cultural relativists imply e.g., that women or Asians do not need autonomy. Their counter-argument is that fitting within a group, acting in accord with traditions or following parents is not a sufficient criterion for a lack of autonomy as long as people internally agree to care for others. The argument against a simple libertarian definition of autonomy (as the absence of compromising external constraints for the individual) can be expedited even further: if autonomy cannot make affirmative commitments to substantive social values, then it remains unclear how such position grounds any particular value commitments. Generally speaking, universal values such as the respect of others or the appreciation of socio-cultural scaffolding would be, counter-intuitively, excluded by a liberalist-libertarian understanding of human agency.

We can act for ourselves as individuals pursuing personal interests, but we can equally act by taking the interests of others wholeheartedly into consideration without compromising personal integrity. Depending on one’s cultural perspective, somebody’s individual freedom might be perceived as somebody else’s selfishness. Identifying autonomy narrowly with individual independence can to this extent not pass as a culturally unbiased perspective.

Another argument rarely considered when discussing individual liberties is the influence of internal disrupting factors on the self, such as anxieties, fears, personal vulnerabilities, mental disorders or pathological personality traits, leaving individual agency compromised. An unquestioned assumption of libertarian philosophy is the sanity and justified perspective of personal decision-making. But what if the individual proves manipulative, deceitful, prone to impulsive risk-taking or simply exercising poor judgment? Individual as well as collective agency are to this argument constructed neither unipolar autonomous nor heteronomous, but they co-exist as a system of mutual checks and balances.

Bandura (2006) addresses the issue of collectivist versus individualist perspectives more pragmatically by differentiating between individual, proxy and collective agency. Besides individual agency, proxy agency regulates cases of indirect control, e.g., when we act on behalf of others or acquire resources via others. In addition, collective agency underpins the fact that in today’s interconnected world we rarely act by ourselves, but within teams and under the moderating influence of larger groups. To limit autonomy exclusively to individual independence would, in the light of real-world interconnectedness and pervading globalization, not conclude relevant and meaningful theory.

2. Intersubjectivity as the key to understanding human autonomy

SDT as well as Bandura agree that strong interactions between individual and collective autonomy exist. Ryan et al. (2005) point out that we depend upon others who support autonomous regulation. SDT has yielded much research investigating the inhibiting influence of socio-cultural systems on autonomy and intrinsic motivation. Autonomy, in SDT, is not defined by the absence of external influences, but by one’s assent to such inputs. Collective autonomy is experienced by processes of endorsement and decisive identification. Following the philosophical outlines by Heider (1958) and deCharms (1968), SDT insists on the principle of personal causation. Autonomy, literally, means self-governance in SDT and it rests on intrinsic motivation. The critical question from a socio-cognitive perspective is if intrinsic motivation provides not just a necessary, but a sufficient account of personal autonomy. After all, if assent is an integral element of collective autonomy then an individual’s motivation must be equally based on good implicit or explicit reasons for such agreement. The question is if intrinsic motivation can be conceptualised devoid of cognitive agency, e.g., by solely and automatically following intuitive goals that seem to develop us as an authentic person, or in tandem with self-reflected awareness about intrinsically-motivating reasons.

In this context, SDT (Ryan, Kuhl & Deci, 1997) has developed a comprehensive model of motivation which explains the continuum of heteronomous and autonomous regulation. In SDT, motivation ranges on the scale from amotivation (impersonal) to external regulation (highly controlled), introjected regulation (moderately controlled), identified regulation (moderately autonomous), to integrated and intrinsic regulation, both latter types being highly autonomous. External regulation is better known from behaviourism under the term of operant conditioning (Skinner, 1953). It is argued in the following that integrated and intrinsic motivations, to be truly autonomous, require the involvement of metacognitive reasoning. This notion implies that an individual asserts herself to behave according to good reasons and is capable of evoking intrinsic motivation via acts of personal rationalisation.

Culturally-bound identities develop, as described in SDT, on a continuum between various types of heteronomous and autonomous social regulation. Christine Koorsgaard (1996) coined the term ‘practical identity’ representing this notion. Practical identity, which is governed by locally-grounded heteronomous and autonomous types of regulation, manifests peoples’ socio-cultural reflection on values and normative self-concept. Practical identity is in the following is referred to as ‘practical agency’.

An initial mapping of individual phenomenology to heteronomous versus autonomous regulation-types, largely congruent with SDT, is summarised in Figure 1. Intersubjectivity, within the presented coordinate system, implies that subjective internal motivations, reflections, desires, experience and conscience do not stand in isolation (or prior) to the social world, but are socially constructed. Agentic psychological experiences and processes ‘are in virtue of being elements of our interaction with others’ (Anderson, p.93).

Figure1: Indicated in red are types of social regulation which are set within a coordinate system between the axis of autonomy versus heteronomy and individual versus social psychology. Autonomous regulation extends to the conscious recognition of outgroups, whereby heteronomous regulation deals predominantly with internal role beliefs to ensure ingroup coherence.

3. Bandura’s concept of agency and the question of free will

For Bandura (2006, 1977), the self is socially constructed through transactional experiences with the environment. Analogously to SDT, it is cognitive competencies that enable agency, namely intentionality, future-directed forethought, self-reactiveness and self-reflectiveness. Agency, for Bandura, is not represented by the metaphysical assumption of a ‘free will’, but by the ability to make causal contributions to the course of events. Bandura’s latter notion is a novel reply to reductionist biology and neuroscience who regard individual autonomy as an illusion created by the brain (Pinker, 2000). Following Bandura’s argument, even if mental processes were in fact fully determined by underlying brain processes, the probabilistic nature of physics would still allow for us to draw causal and conditional inferences to sequences of events. Reductionist arguments are to this extent not tangent and relevant to cognitive ability. Habermas’ argument resembles Bandura’s: if we assume that autonomous agency is defined as the ability to respond to socially constructed reasons, it is convincing to conceptualise human agency as a natural part of the social world.

Identity theory, the assumption that physical states are identical to mind-states, is more an academic proposition rather than a scientific theory. The problem of Identity Theory is that it is theoretically and practically impossible to prove that a person’s subjective experience equals corresponding ‘objective’ brain-states. Any methodology would require admitting a first person self-report (and all its uncertainties) as evidence to prove identity to an objective account, which would be self-contradictory to its truth proposition. To argue with Karl Popper, Identity Theory can, for this reason, not be methodologically falsified and therefore does not qualify as a scientific theory.

Alternatively, a more pragmatic and intuitive idea would be to understand the mind as the action that the brain (as a biological organ) performs. The brain performs the correlated action of mind, which, empowered by the resource of context-separated memory, is capable of remodelling neuronal connections, enabling both upward and downward causation between brain and mind. Unlike routinized minds, the mind can go offline and direct focus on mental content, away from environmental stimuli (Vierkant, 2013). By formulating mental content independent of external influences, we are endowed with the capacity to conceptualise competing mental models to make sense of the world. The latter is no trivial fact considering that heteronomous regulation can hinder and distort cognitive ability and learning.

Regarding reductionist hypotheses, research on human memory and underlying learning processes stand on solid ground and there are no reasons, rather than ideological, to reduce the complexity and richness of mental processes and their meaning towards a single-minded, convergent proposition.

4. Habermas’ five dimensions of autonomy

In his insightful introduction to Habermas’ concepts of autonomy, Joel Anderson (Fultner, 2011) explains the key ideas of an intersubjective account of autonomy by their absence. He writes “To lack political autonomy is to be subjected to illegitimate domination by others, specifically by not being integrated in an appropriate way in processes of collective self-determination. To lack moral autonomy is to be incapable of letting intersubjectively shared reason determine one’s will. To lack accountable agency is to behave as a result of compelling forces rather than to act for reasons. To lack personal autonomy is to be unable to engage in critical reflection about what to do with one’s life. And to lack authentic identity is to have one’s claim to recognition vis-à-vis others get no update” (Anderson, p. 91).

The five mentioned key concepts of autonomy shall be explained in detail.

4.1 Socio-political autonomy in relation to private autonomy

For Habermas, private and public autonomy evolve reciprocally within social interaction. To this extent, they presuppose each other and emerge jointly. The intersubjective role of both types of autonomy is formulated stronger as compared to SDT or Bandura. Private autonomy does not only become difficult when public autonomy erodes and dissolves, as Anderson points out, it ceases to exist. Without a social framework that guarantees a person legal rights, impartial democratic institutions, provisions such as healthcare, education, opportunities to work, income, decent housing and general social inclusion, private autonomy cannot materialise. Private autonomy is in this light a fundamentally social construct, which resonates with Vygotsky’s assumption (1978) that individualism can only develop within adequate social scaffolding.

Habermas refers to these conditions as ‘lifeworld resources’. Private autonomy cannot practically be separated from the very social conditions and resources that enable and develop it. Ryan and Deci (2011) recognise the influences that social contexts exercise on inhibiting or developing autonomy and intrinsic motivation. To this account, it is of interest to psychology how individual and collective practical agency develops as either socially inclusive mindsets (in the form of solidarity, democratic ethos and public empathy for others) or socially exclusive concepts (in the form of privilege, the protection of group rights and social hierarchies), this is how lifeworld resource management is psychologically constructed.

The architecture of the lifeworld is not arbitrary but requires being rational to support its members developing and maintaining personal autonomy. This implies psychological prerequisites such as successful childhood socialisation, a functional public education system and independent media allowing for the open discussion and negotiation of societal problems.

Picture above: Public education is a good example for the social scaffolding of individual autonomy by providing lifeworld resources. Image by The Portsmouth Grammar School

4.2 Moral autonomy

Moral self-determination is for Habermas indistinguishable to a determination by reason. Bandura elaborates from a psychological perspective “In the development of moral agency, individuals adopt standards of right and wrong that serve as guides and deterrents for conduct. In this self-regulatory process, people monitor their conduct and the conditions under which it occurs, judge it in relation to their moral standards and perceived circumstances, and regulate their actions by the consequences they apply to themselves” (Bandura, 2006, p.171, see also Bandura 1991). Self-regulation and monitoring are metacognitive competencies that involve the cognitive evaluation of circumstances.

Analogously, Habermas’ extends, beyond automatic self-regulation, to cognitive competence for the evaluation of goals, attitudes and behaviour. This entails not only reflections about mental content and how it is processed, but the ability to metacognitively question how our goals, attitudes and behaviour affect others. Under heteronomous influence, practical agency can effectively compromise cognitive capacity, e.g., when people follow ideologies or become obsessed with defending group privileges. In such cases, they typically demonstrate limited motivational and cognitive capacity to consider the perspectives of others.

This conundrum recognises Hegel’s argument against Kant’s deontology; put more simply, that morality is not a faceless abstraction of universal principles, but a rich tapestry of peoples’ conflicting desires, personal goals and motives, natural interests, beliefs, shared cultural values, behavioural patterns, emotive-cognitive limitations and underlying life experiences.

Without being able to reflect on the constraints that are imposed by practical agency, local identity cannot constitute moral status. Peoples’ intentions and behaviour might be justified from their personal perspective, they may be experienced as morally right in local context, but they may not have moral worth in the light of inherent intersubjective obligations and norms. Folk beliefs about moral legitimacy usually lack justification in every context, which is addressed in the light of meta-contextual and intersubjective validity.

This is why it makes sense to psychologically frame in-situ cognitive agency as a function of our practical agency, but defining socio-cognitive competence as the general ability to reason practical agency across contexts and integrating with the perspective of others. The latter empowers moral agency as the ability to take intersubjective perspectives and claims into consideration.

Picture above: The behaviour of enraged football hooligans is governed by group aggression as an example of heteronomous regulation. Perceived rivals are not only socially excluded, but intentionally harmed in the absence of cognitive capacity. Photo: AFP

4.3 Accountable agency

As a result of moral agency (the ability to reflectively respond to socially constructed reasons), we hold each other accountable to this extent. We decide whether somebody’s attitudes and behaviour is either praiseworthy or blameworthy, and we usually expect of others (as we do of ourselves) that we can justify our actions, that we know what we are doing. Since accountable agency is expressed by reciprocal social expectations, it has a normative character. Without such accountability, responsibilities cannot be defined. It is no small matter if people only assume or think that they are responsible, or if they also feel that they are responsible, that they demonstrate a genuine motivation to translate thought into corresponding behaviour. We may call this ability executive moral agency.

Psychologically, there are limitations to accountability, such as e.g., in the case of mental disorders or learning disabilities. An assertion to reason can only be performed in the discursive exchange with other reason-holders. As concluded previously, practical agency empowers and limits cognitive agency, and subsequently in-situ moral agency. Like in the case of cognitive competence, moral agency requires being differentiated from moral accountability. A person might display limited moral agency, such as in the case of drunk driving, but is still morally responsible for her actions in the light of intersubjective reason.

On a wider scale, the major challenge of a technology-driven world is compounded by the fact that responsibilities are diluted and distributed over complex systems. This is why we differentiate e.g., between primary and secondary affected groups – those who are directly affected by new technologies, policies and social changes, and those who are indirectly affected. More than often, we are psychologically disconnected from the consequences of our actions. We may not realise that some of the products we buy depend on the exploitation of others far beyond our borders. Likewise, environmental disasters do not know national borders and secondary affected groups might span across generations, such as in the Bhopal gas tragedy. Beyond the psychological challenge of lifeworld-complexity, Bandura (2007) has exemplified ‘selective moral disengagement’ as a major topic in social psychology. Moral disengagement in the case of ecological sustainability is for Bandura defined by “reducing accountability by displacement and diffusion of responsibility; ignoring, minimising, and disputing harmful effects; and dehumanising and blaming the victims and derogating the messengers of ecologically bad news” (Bandura, pg.8). Bandura (2016) illustrates mechanisms of moral disengagement in complex societies in case studies involving the entertainment industry, the gun lobby, the corporate world as well as the social psychology of terrorism and counter-terrorism.

Picture above: The Bhopal industrial disaster left 600,000 people exposed to toxic gases with an estimated death toll of 15,000. Even 30 years later, many women who were exposed have given birth to physically and mentally disabled children. Archive Photo: AP Photo/Sondeep Shankar

From the perspective of SDT, intrinsic motivation is required to exercise interventions promoting environmental and social sustainability. Since moral executive agency is grounded in autonomous, intrinsic motivation, contemporary social psychology needs to investigate and contextualize the psychological prerequisites enabling moral agency and moral executive agency.

4.4 Personal autonomy

Personal autonomy encompasses self-governance in the widest sense; to decide freely how we lead our life, how we bring up and educate our children, whom we love, how we plan our careers or how we contribute to society. Philosophical approaches tend to define personal autonomy by universal standards, such as internal cohesiveness, reasons-responsiveness and so on. Habermas’ concept avoids abstracted concepts and emphasises the socio-historical development of autonomous agency. To this argument, personal autonomy is defined by the competencies required to navigate through an increasingly complex and globalised world.

We have to make dramatically more decisions as compared to our grandparents and parents and have to deal with widely expanded options for decision-making and assuming the responsibilities that these decisions imply. In this context, SDT (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Ryan 1995) has defined autonomy, competence and relatedness as core interrelating human needs. To avoid regress into heteronomy, personal autonomy depends on the acquisition of navigational competencies as much as it requires to be protected in terms of socio-political autonomy. In conclusion, we can conceptualise personal competence and social autonomy as the internal and external scaffolding required to develop human agency.

4.5 Authentic identity (Authenticity)

In Habermas’ intersubjective understanding of autonomous selfhood, authentic identity is not, as one may intuitively assume, expressed by one’s uniqueness based on assertive personal self-description. Authenticity is rather based on a two-stage process. The first step is to understand what and how one feels, thinks and behaves, while the second step tries to make sense of the experienced account. We attempt to render our personal existence intelligible, which entails the possibility to fail making sense of oneself. As such, we are naturally criticizable to ourselves. Authentic identity is neither based on blind self-assertion, nor decided by external majority vote but by entering an internal discourse attempting to figure ourselves out meaningfully, to make sense of ourselves.

Habermas links reflective self-description to public language when he elaborates:

“From the ethical point of view we clarify clinical questions of the successful and happy, or better, not misspent, life, which arise in the context of a particular collective form of life or of an individual life history. Practical reflection takes the form of a process of hermeneutic self-clarification. It articulates strong evaluations in light of which I orient my self-understanding. In this context the critique of self-deceptions and of symptoms of a compulsive or alienated mode of life takes its yardstick from the idea of a consciously guided and coherent course of life, where the authenticity of a life-project can be understood as a higher-level validity claim on an analogy with the claim to truthfulness of expressive speech acts.” (Habermas & Cronin, 1996, p.341)

Claims to authentic identity can, in this extended definition, only be made by living a life that supports the truthful expression of feelings. This excludes the possibility of inauthenticity, the construction of a flawed or narcissist self-portrayal which deviates from the good faith we would reasonably place into an honest self-account. Placing a self-monitored account performs an act of vouching which is processed either internally by one’s consciousness, or externally by one’s self-positioning in relation to loved ones and friends. As Anderson notes to this point “Vouching is a matter of issuing to others a guarantee that one can make good (or fail to make good on) by living up to one’s claim. (…) We can aspire, in private, to live up to certain goals, but we can vouch for ourselves only to others.” (Anderson, p.108)

Lastly, in avoidance of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957), we try to align authentic identity with corresponding moral beliefs about the justification of supportive social conditions to serve personal autonomy. Personal identities based on heteronomous social regulation types experience authenticity in terms of fulfilling social obligations, complying to collective norms and executing moral agency in the light of group-interests. To this extent, group-interdependent identities are unable (or limited) in creating discursive internal accounts although the culturally embedded expression of feelings is genuine.

5. Human autonomy in the light of psychological theory

Lifeworld resources such as public education, a social market economy, reliable democratic institutions and fair public discourse are prerequisites to private autonomy. For this reason, social and private autonomy evolve reciprocally and in codependency. Since lifeworld resources are historically and culturally grounded, such resources are psychologically constructed within the spectrum of autonomous and heteronomous types of social regulation. In order to develop autonomy and relatedness, democratic institutions and organisations, such as people’s workplace, need to accommodate opportunities for personal growth and the fostering of competencies. Without the support of lifelong learning initiatives and the continued care for people’s professional development, to argue with SDT, social- and personal autonomy remain elusive, they are not empowered to carry agency in society.

From an individual perspective and in everyday life, private autonomy realises as practical- and authentic agency. Practical agency is linked to the ability to make sense of our social world, which entails questioning its fairness and openness, whereby authentic identity is linked to the ability to make sense of our autobiographic life. Both aspects of private autonomy are grounded in reason, the attempt to make coherent sense out of ourselves and the social world. Such an intersubjective and interdependent understanding of human agency is also compatible with established psychological frameworks such as the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991) since social- and subjective norms and their underlying cognitive assessment are conceptualised as distinct factors evoking behavioural outcomes (see Figure 2).

The same applies to Triandis’ Theory of Interpersonal Behaviour (Triandis, 1997, 1980) by including social roles and self-concept as critical elements of personal agency and recognising the central function of affective motivation. By including role beliefs and habits, Triandis’ model acknowledges the culturally-heteronomous aspects of practical identity that rational choice approaches neglect. The concluding argument of an intersubjective approach is that by grounding human agency in socially-constructed reason, we become accountable to ourselves and to others. The subsequent psychological ability to take over responsibilities is a prominent theme in Bandura’s latest work, which investigates not only self-efficacy, but also the option of moral disengagement (Bandura 2006a, 2006b, 2007, 2016).

Bandura’s ‘agentic‘ approach is compatible with Habermas’ sociological approach insofar he describes human behavior as a result of tradic codetermination, conceptualizing that the causes of human behavior are reciprocally rooted in personal (intrapsychic) determinants, environmental determinants, such as available life world resources, and behavioral determinants, such as socio-cultural mindsets and social practices (Bandura, 2008).

Summary

SDT as well as Bandura’s concept of human agency share much in common with Habermas’ account of intersubjective autonomy, in particular in regard to the interactions between the individual, culture and society. This comes to no surprise since intersubjectivity, as defined in sociology, and interpersonal relations, as defined in psychology, share the basic assumption that social spheres are created by meaningful interactions between people. Habermas’ approach extends psychological areas of investigations to the rational construction of the lifeworld and the management of lifeworld resources. Since social autonomy protects and empowers personal autonomy, empirical societal conditions for supporting autonomy cannot be methodologically separated from the constitution of personal autonomy. Bandura goes as far as to state that when looking at autonomy in de-contextualized isolation”Autonomous agency is an illusion.” (Bandura, 2016, p.24).

Personal autonomy is not only, as elaborated in SDT, a matter of subjective well-being, but it entails the acquisition of competencies to support personal self-rationalization as well as the development of social resources with others. Moral agency and cognitive agency correlate and are measured against general cognitive competence to validate executive moral agency.

True moral autonomy encompasses the abilities of self-regulation and self-sanctioning, emotive-motivational as well as cognitive resources. A mere cognitive understanding of moral problems would be incapable of evoking motivation to elicit behaviour and prove epiphenomenal. In the worst case, the mere intellectualization of moral issues serves moral disengagement by formulating moral attitudes unilaterally, independent of underlying social causation and context.

Finally, moral agency, as it involves goal-directed behaviour, evokes accountable agency. The corresponding psychological question is how we are willing to assume responsibility for our actions and how people are not simply blind onlookers on their behaviour, as Bandura stated, but are capable of holding themselves and others accountable. Lastly, personal authenticity is viewed from an intersubjective perspective to how acts fit coherently into an overall life in order to self-support personal autonomy, e.g., in contrast to out-of-character behaviour. This entails the ability to vouch for oneself and one’s recognition by others to be willing and able to try. Authenticity concludes in the performative assertion that we are ultimately self-responsible for leading our life with others.

Autonomy is dependent on internal and external scaffolding to evolve. The internal scaffolding of private autonomy is composed by authenticity and moral agency, relating to a person’s intrinsic motivation, the external scaffolding is provided by available lifeworld resources and the rational construction of social domains. A holistic view of human agency requires to this argument to take all accounts into consideration: how we make sense of ourselves and of others, how we engage with others on a social level, how we construct shared lifeworld resources and how we hold each other accountable.

Human agency can be broadly conceptualised as the empowerment of freedom. This entails not only the freedom from oppression and constraint (as in a libertarian view) but also the freedom to create an order that offers equal opportunity to all (in terms of shared lifeworld resources), involving the self-directedness of life projects on individual account as well as the freedom to social inclusion and participation on a societal account.

An overview of an interdependent model of human agency is visualised in Figure 2.

Figure 2: An interdependent model of human agency. Private and social autonomy evolve in codependency via the institutionalisation of rational lifeworld resources. Practical agency and authentic identity develop as individualised aspects of socio-cognitive competence and self-rationalization. Moral agency and moral executive agency relate to the ability of self-regulation and self-correction.

References

Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 50 (2): 179–211. doi:10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T

Bandura, A. (1991). Social cognitive theory of moral thought and action. In W.M. Kurtines & J.L. Gewirtz (Eds.), Handbook of moral behavior and development (Vol. 1, pp. 45–103). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall.

Bandura, A. (2006a). Toward a Psychology of Human Agency. Perspectives On Psychological Science, 1(2), 164-180. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2006.00011.x

Bandura, A. (2006b). Training in terrorism through selective moral disengagement. In J.F. Forest (Ed.). The making of a terrorist: recruitment, training and root causes (Vol. 2, pp. 34-50). Westport, CT: Praeger

Bandura, A. (2007). Impeding ecological sustainability through selective moral disengagement. International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development, Vol. 2, No. 1 , 2007

Bandura, A. (2008). The reconstrual of “free will” from the agentic perspective of social cognitive theory. In]. Baer,]. C. Kaufman, & R. F. Baumeister (Eds.), Are we free? Psychology and free will (pp. 86-127). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bandura, A. (2016). Moral disengagement: How people do harm and live with themselves. New York: Worth Publishers, Macmillan Learning

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The ‘what’ and ‘why’ of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227-268.

deCharms, R. (1968). Personal causation. New York: Academic

Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Fultner, B. (2011). Jürgen Habermas: Key concepts. Durham, England: Acumen.

Habermas, J., & Cronin, C. (1996). On the Cognitive Content of Morality. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 335.

Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley

Kahneman, D., & Deaton, A. (2010). High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, (38). 16489.

Pinker, S. (2002). The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature. New York: Viking.

Korsgaard, C. M., & O’Neill, O. (1996). The sources of normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ryan, R. M. (1995). Psychological needs and the facilitation of integrative processes. Journal of Personality, 63, 397-427.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2011). A self-determination theory perspective on social, institutional, cultural, and economic supports for autonomy and their importance for well-being. In V. I. Chirkov, R. M. Ryan, K. M. Sheldon, V. I. Chirkov, R. M. Ryan, K. M. Sheldon (Eds.) , Human autonomy in cross-cultural context: Perspectives on the psychology of agency, freedom, and well-being (pp. 45-64). New York, NY, US: Springer Science + Business Media. doi:10.1007/978-90-481-9667-8_3

Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. New York, Macmillan

Triandis, H.C. (1977). Interpersonal Behaviour. Monterey, C.A: Brook/Cole. 98

Triandis, H. C. (1980). Values, attitudes, and interpersonal behavior. In H. Howe & M. Page (Eds.), Nebraska symposium on motivation 1979, 195–295. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

Vierkant, T. (2013). What metarepresentation is for. In: Beran, M. J. (Ed.), Foundations of metacognition [electronic book] / Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2013.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Why are computers still so dull? Where are the thinking machines we have been promised?

Posted on May 2, 2016 by joanakompa • Tagged 2001 - A Space Odyssey, AI, Artificial Intelligence, David Chalmers, David Gelernter, emotional intelligence, Frank Jackson, Gary Marcus, h+, HAL 9000, Isaac Asimov, Mary's Room, Ray Kurzweil, Roger Penrose, self-driving cars, Singularity, Stephen Wolfram, Three Laws of Robotics, Transhumanism • 2 Comments

chap3

Above: Scene from the movie ‘Chappie’ (2015), directed by Neill Blomkamp

One of the most famous artificial intelligence (AI) entities in modern popular culture was arguably the HAL 9000 computer in the modern classic ‘2001- A Space Odyssey’; the insider joke being that when we shift all letters by one to the right in the alphabet, ‘HAL’ reads ‘IBM’. While HAL was creepy and evil, viciously attempting to kill the spaceship’s crew, we have in the meantime happily accepted the first wave of AI without much suspicion. Apple’s SIRI, Microsoft’s CORTANA and Facebook’s ‘M’ (the latter is still in development, but watch out for it) present the latest generation of commercialized AI in the form of friendly personal assistants. Who wouldn’t like to have a digital servant at their disposal?

CORTANA, for example, is courteous and friendly and diligently sends complex user profiling data back to her master, in this case Microsoft. Information-delivering loyalty is no different for the other mentioned models. AI comes with the programmed, built-in agenda to make profit for their owners, obviously. The only convincing solution to create a truly private assistant would be the development of local AI. Speech recognition and machine learning have made tremendous leaps in usability over the past decade. But why is the humble PC sitting on my desk still as uninspiring as a rock? Why don’t I believe anything that SIRI says? My personal and disappointing experience with AI came in the form of a car navigation system which had sent me in continuous loops around the city – with the effect of missing my flight. Then again, how do we define the ambiguous term of ‘intelligence’?

A well-known procedure to test ‘machine intelligence’ is the Turing Test, which has inspired generations of science fiction writers. The Turing Test was designed, to dispel a common myth, not as a test to prove of whether computers can or cannot think. The Turing test has been designed to instruct computer to lie (we may also say ‘to fake’ or ‘make-believe’) in such a manner that a human dialogue-partner cannot tell the difference of whether the conversation partner is human or machine. The Turing test is a test of performance, not a test to prove if or how machines are capable of mental states.

The claim that in the very near future computers will be capable of consciousness is one of the most fascinating public debates. When will we become obsolete? When will the Terminator knock at our door? Looking at my home computer, probably not anytime soon. Followers of ‘Transhumanism‘ and advocates of strong AI (which is the label for the idea of emerging self-conscious machines, or ‘h+’ in short), such as one of their most prominent speakers, Ray Kurzweil, cite two key arguments to why the end of humanity as we know it is inescapable and nigh. Stephen Hawking believes in the inevitable advent of strong AI as well.

Pro Singularity: The Complexity-Threshold Argument and the Reverse-Engineering Argument

Firstly, it is argued that the performance of massive parallel computing increases exponentially. This is why, at some stage, consciousness may spring into existence once a certain threshold of complexity can be achieved. A single neuron cannot create consciousness, but billions of neurons can, which is the analogy being drawn. Secondly, by reverse-engineering the human brain, software can simulate precisely the same functions as neuronal networks. It is therefore anticipated to be only a matter of time when ‘singularity’, the advent of machine consciousness, arrives. If it does, so transhumanists conclude, biological intelligence becomes obsolete and we will eventually be replaced by the ‘next big thing’ of evolution, the ‘h+’. So much for cheerful prospects.

The Simulation-Reality Argument

One of the most ardent critics to this claim is Yale computer scientist David Gelernter. For Gelernter, to start with, simulations are not realities. We may, e.g., simulate the process of photosynthesis in a software-program while de facto no real photosynthesis has taken place. Computers, so Gelernter, are simply made out of the wrong stuff. No matter how sophisticated or complex a software-program simulates a process, it cannot transform actual carbon-dioxide into sugar and oxygen. We can simulate the weather, but nobody gets wet. We can simulate the brain, but no mind emerges.The underlying argument states that digital-, quantum- and biological modes of computation encompass fundamentally different types of causation and therefore cannot be substituted for one another. Consciousness, so Gelernter’s conclusion, is an emergent biological property of the brain.

HAL

Above: Big Brother is watching you. In Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001 – A Space Odyssey’ (1968) this was the legendary HAL 9000.

The Mind-Brain Unity Argument

Brains develop organically over an entire lifetime. Our minds, as emergent properties of the brain, are intrinsically linked to the unique structure of neural pathways. The brain is not simply ‘hardware’, it is the physical embodiment of life-long leaning processes. This is why we cannot ‘upload’ a mind into a computer – we cannot separate the mind from its brain. For the same reason we cannot run several minds on the same brain – like we run several programs on a single computer. There is only one mind per brain and it is not portable.

The Psychological Goal-Setting Argument (Ajzen-Vygotsky Hypothesis)

Besides the obvious physical differences between brains and computers, cognitive differences could not be greater. AI developer Stephen Wolfram argues that the ability to set goals is an intrinsic human ability. Software can only execute those objectives that it was programmed and designed to. An AI cannot meaningfully set goals for itself or others. The reason for this, so Wolfram, is that goals are defined by our particulars—our particular biology, our particular psychology and particular cultural history. These are domains that machines have no access to or understanding of. One could also argue in reverse: because human life develops and grows within social scaffolding (a concept developed by psychologist Lev Vygotsky, the founder of a theory of human cultural and bio-social development), deeply embedded in semantics, it is experienced as meaningful, which is a necessary prior condition to define goals and purpose. This would be the psychological extension to Wolfram’s argument.

Pepper insert

Above: The lovable Japanese service-robot Pepper recognizes a person’s emotional states and is programmed to be kind, to dance and entertain. Is the idea of AI-driven robots as sweet, helpful assistants necessarily bad? Is is easy to see that the idea could be reversed (imagine military robots), giving weight to Isaac Asimov’s ‘Three Laws of Robotics’: (1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. (2) A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. (3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Setting goals also depends on a person’s attitude and underlying subjective norms in order to form intentions. If we would expect machines to set goals, they would not only be required to understand socially-embedded semantics, but to be able to develop attitudes and a subjective model of desirable outcomes. This requirement has been extensively researched in the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) by Icek Ajzen. We may coin the hypothesized inability of an AI to set meaningful goals the ‘Ajzen-Vygotsky hypothesis‘. The bar is set even higher when we consider including not only individual planning, which could be arbitrary, but the ability to consensual and cooperative goal-setting.

Arguing for Weak AI instead

What machines unequivocally do get better at is pattern-recognition, such as the ability to analyze our habits (e.g., which type of products or restaurants we prefer), speech recognition or reading emotional states, such as by webcam facial analysis or by measuring the heartbeat of fitness-wristbands. AI is getting better at assembling and updating profiles of us and at responding to profile-changes accordingly, which is a novel, interactive quality of modern IT.

In our role as eager social network users, we continuously feed AI the required raw material, which is precious user data. Higher-level interaction based on refined profiles can be very useful. AI can, e.g., assist us via single voice command, rendering the use of multiple applications obsolete. AI can manage application for us in the background while we focus on the task at hand. On the darker side, AI may compare our profile and actions to those of others, without our knowledge and consent for strategic purpose, which represents a more dystopian possibility (or already-established NSA practice).

Machine Learning is not an Easy Task when there is Little Data Available and Environments are Complex – Another Argument for Weak AI

Psychologist Gary Marcus looks at the trustworthiness of AI for real-world applications. The problem with machine learning, according to Marcus, is that AI does not do well when relying on limited data sets or in complex situations within stochastic environments. For example, let’s think of self-driving cars. Driving styles of car drivers in Shanghai, Stuttgart, New York, Singapore, Rome or Calcutta are entirely different, making a standardized AI driving algorithm for self-driving cars not only impractical, but potentially life-endangering.

mercedes

Above: Many car manufacturers work currently on developing self-driving cars. Here Mercedes’ concept study, the F 015, ‘Luxury in Motion’. Non-car companies such as Google and Apple have joined the race.

Machine Learning usually involves several data sets: a test-learning set, a training set and a (real-world) task set. Real-world scenarios do not provide conveniently pre-structured situations and data (such as, e.g., in chess or for recommendation systems), but they consist of an almost infinite number of situations. What when it snows, or in heavy rain, or when an unexpected obstacle appears that has not been captured in the system’s database before? We don’t want a cleaning robot to bang against our furniture too often. Trusting a robot to take care of a child is a recipe for disaster to happen.

Marcus suggests developing cognitive psychological models for AI (e.g., by applying a variety of ways how to recognize objects, not only by a single algorithm) to improve the accuracy of applied AI for specific contexts: If it looks like a dog, barks like a dog and behaves like a dog, the probability is high that we are indeed dealing with a dog and not a hyena or a goat, since a single low-pixel camera-input may deceive the AI.If programmers want AI to efficiently learn from sparse data sets, so Marcus, they should study how children learn, highly efficient, without much prior knowledge.

Despite what some people think, AI today is not anywhere near to what science-fiction suggests. For now, we better don’t base missile-guided systems on Deep Learning algorithms.

Penrose deterministic but non-computational system

Above: Systems can be deterministic, but non-computable

The Non-Computational Pattern Argument

An intriguing argument against strong AI was formulated by Sir Roger Penrose, which can be reformulated in the context of mind-environment interaction. Penrose demonstrates in his lecture “Consciousness and the foundations of physics” how a system could be fully deterministic, ruled by the logic of cause and effect, and still be non-computational. It is possible to define a set of a simple mathematical rules for the creation of intersecting polyomino whose sequence is output as a unique, non-repeating and unpredictable pattern. There is no algorithm, so Penrose’ argument, that can describe the evolving pattern.

My immediate question was how this thought-experiment is any different from how we learn in the real world. Each new situation creates unique neuronal pathways in our brain. Since we assume, in addition, up- as well as downward-causation between brain (as the biological organ) and mind (the action executed by the organ), cognitive structures evolve (a) non-repetitive and (b) in self-restructuring manner.

Memories form by weaving subjective and objective information into the fabric of an autobiographical narrative. To claim, counter-factually, that narratives are still somehow ‘computed’ by an infinite number of interconnected internal and external processes, misses the point that there is no single algorithm, or program, that can account for a genesis of mind. The dismissal of this argument is by infinite regress.

The ‘Emotional Intelligence’ and Body Argument

Ray Kurzweil is well-aware that ‘intelligence’ cannot evolve in abstraction. This is why he emphasizes the importance of ’emotional intelligence’ for strong AI, to which there are at least two objections. The first is objection is that there cannot be emotions when there is no physical body to evoke them from, only software. Computational cognition lacks semantics without the information provided by an embedded, existential ontology, which implies existential vulnerability. The second objection is that the concept of emotional intelligence itself is a good example of deeply flawed pop-psychology. There is no compelling evidence in the field of psychology that emotional intelligence exists and could be validated as a scientific concept.

HER

Above: The movie HER (2013), directed by Spike Jonze, explores the human need for companionship. The main protagonist, Theordore (Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with an AI, Samantha, who eventually outgrows the relationship with her human partner. As a body-less entity, she develops the ability to establish loving relationships with hundreds of users simultaneously and after an upgrade, a liking for other operating systems which are more similar to herself.

The Multimodal Argument – The Flexibility of Mind

What scientists seem to ignore in the debate about AI is that the human mind can switch between entirely different mental modes, some of which are likely to be more computational (like calculating costs and benefits) and some appear to be less – or not at all computational (such as reflecting on the meaning and quality of experiences and the value of specific goals). The human mind can effortlessly switch between subjective, objective and inter-subjective modes of operation and perspectives. We can see things from the inside out or from outside in. In mental simulation, we can reverse assumptions of causation, which is our reality check. As a result of this flexibility, we have developed a plethora of mind-states involving imagination, heuristics, the ability to hold and detect false beliefs or to distinguish between illusion and true states. It is because we make mistakes, and because of the experience how painful these mistakes can be, that mental self-monitoring and forethought derive meaning. The multimodal argument rests on the assumption that an entity is capable of conscious experience, bringing us to the qualia argument.

The Qualia Argument

In the Philosophy of Mind, qualia is conceptualized as our subjective, experiencing consciousness. We could argue with Daniel Kahneman that this includes concluding memories based on those experiences (the experiencing- versus the memorizing Self). In the Mary’s Room thought-experiment, philosopher Frank Jackson demonstrates the non-physical properties of mental states which philosopher David Chalmers calls the ‘hard problem of consciousness‘, our inability to explain how and why we have qualia.

The thought experiment is as follows: Mary lives her entire life in a room devoid of color—she has never directly experienced color in her entire life, though she is capable of it. Through black-and-white books and other media, she is educated on neuroscience to the point where she becomes an expert on the subject. Mary learns everything there is to know about the perception of color in the brain, as well as the physical facts about how light works in order to create the different color wavelengths. It can be said that Mary is aware of all physical facts about color and color perception.

After Mary’s studies on colour perception in the brain are complete, she exits the room and experiences, for the very first time, direct colour perception. She sees the colour red for the very first time, and learns something new about it — namely, what red looks like.

Jackson concluded that if physicalism is true, Mary ought to have gained total knowledge about color perception by examining the physical world. But since there is something she learns when she leaves the room, then physicalism must be false.

An AI may, in the same manner as Mary, collect information about human interaction and emotions by learning how to read pattern based on programmed algorithms, but it will never be able to experience them. This could be considered a philosophical argument against strong AI (or supporting weak AI to assist us by synthesizing and applying useful information). Linking the multimodal- to the qualia argument states that if the realization of qualia, as a prerequisite, cannot be achieved by machine-learning, subsequent multimodal mental operations can also not be performed by AI.

Anthropomorphized Technology: AI, Gender and Social Attitudes

The question posed in a title by science fiction author Philip K. Dick ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ could be answered, from what has been elaborated, in many ways: (a) Yes, if androids have been programmed to do so (b) Not really, but Turing-wise their dreams seem convincingly real or (c) No, because machines are fundamentally incapable of sentience and self-cognition.

As a big fan of thought-experiments, I enjoyed movies such as ‘Chappie‘, ‘HER‘ or ‘Ex Machina’ thoroughly. A common theme running through all of the stories is the inability of an AI to truly connect to a human understanding of life. Another dominant theme, rather sadly, is the sexual and erotic exploitation of AI by men for the fulfillment of their fantasies (not elaborating on Japanese robot girls here, which is a cultural chapter by itself). It is unlikely that intelligent AI appears anytime soon when all that people can think of is satisfying their most primal urges by creating digital sex slaves, or creating collaborating criminals as elaborated in the movie ‘Chappie’ (2015).

ex_machina_2015_movie-wide

Above: The sexualization of AI to pass the Turing test is a theme in the movie ‘Ex Machine’ (2015) by Alex Garland. Another, more humorous example would be the figure of Giggolo Joe, played by Jude Law, a male prostitute ‘Mecha’ (robot) programmed with the ability to mimic love in Spielberg’s ‘AI’ (2001).

The two most commonly quoted arguments to why most AI are formatted female are that (a) lone male programmers who work on AI create de facto their virtual girlfriends as a compensatory reaction to their social deprivation and (b) men and women find a female AI equally less intimidating and more pleasant to interact with as compared to male AI. It is revealing how we anthropomorphize technology (as we have, e.g., anthopomorphized Gods), which is worthy of a separate inquiry.

Beyond the obsession with creating artificial intelligence, how about creating artificial kindness, artificial respect, artificial understanding or artificial empathy? We could distribute these qualities among those humans who dearly lack them.

Summary

As weak AI continues to develop, prospects for the advent of strong AI remain in the realm of science fiction. There are compelling arguments that singularity will not emerge anytime soon and may, in fact, never realize. One of the key arguments is that biological, digital and quantum systems are based on fundamentally different types of causation. They are not identical and require technological translation. AI can be understood, in this light, as the translation between human consciousness and information processing in the digital and the quantum domain in order to serve human needs and goals.

Digital assistants and service robots have already become useful and self-optimizing extensions of our social life. As for all technology, AI is subject to potential abuse since the ethics of goal-setting , for the better or worse, remain still a unique quality of fallible programmers within the open domain of human imagination.

Towards a Sustainable Society: Best Student Entries of Fall 2015 (Multimedia & Visual Communication Research)

Posted on October 12, 2015 by joanakompa • Tagged Students for sustainable development, Sustainable society • 1 Comment

(from left to right: Maneerat Sartwattanarod, Vicky Nway, Lucasz Saczek)

In the course of their undergraduate thesis for the Bachelor of Design at Raffles International College in Bangkok, I have had the pleasure to coach and mentor a particularly gifted group of students. To gain insight into their work for the public I have conducted interviews with Maneerat Sartwattanarod (Thailand), who has developed pharmaceutical packaging design for the visually impaired, Matthew Spaulding (USA), who has explored entomophagy, the innovative and original idea of commercializing insects as food, and Lukasz Saczek (Poland), who has investigated the problems of orphanages in Thailand. Special mention goes to Vicky Nway (Myanmar) who has documented the dynamics behind productive and dignified ageing. Credit goes also to my colleague Pirawan Numdokmai for coaching our Visual Communication Design students.

INTERVIEW 1: Maneerat Sartwattanarod (Gigg): The ‘Braille Pill’ Project – Developing Braille-based medical packaging

Developing medical packaging for the visually impaired is a very specific topic. What got you started?

Gigg: I got the idea from talking to people during the “Dialogue in the Dark”- exhibition [a government organization], so I asked myself how I can design something useful for blind people since design must be useful and accessible to everybody. When I interviewed blind people, they mentioned that they are not looking for technology based on a smart phone since it is hard to use and to understand, especially for elderly blind people. I wanted to develop a design which can be used in daily life and which is relevant to this group. So, as a designer, I came up with the idea of a pharmaceutical packaging design. I wanted to re-design medical packaging and medical labels. It had to be easy to understand and user-friendly. My project hypothesis states that it is possible to design a Braille-based packaging design that allows visually impaired people to read medication information as accurately and almost as efficient as non-impaired people. I thought it would be excellent if I could really create this and if visually impaired people could use my packaging design in Thailand. It was a big challenge for me.

You have developed the design in cooperation with visually impaired and blind people. Can you tell us a little more about your approach?

Gigg: Yes, first I went to the foundation of the blind in Nakornpathom and I conducted and recorded qualitative interviews. Many blind people told me that they cannot imagine shapes, even if non- impaired people try to explain them. Blind people don’t read symbols, but they understand Braille code for Thai language. The sensation of touch is the most important. After interviewing, I started my research. I created the first prototypes of my packaging design which included a Paracetamol box, as well as the pharmaceutical label for the clinic and hospital. The design should assist blind people to live their life independently and as easy as non-visually impaired people.

Braille-based packaging design, (click to enlarge)

How did you test the design? Can you elaborate on your methodology?

Gigg: My prototype packaging design was tested by 40 participants, 20 visually impaired people and 20 non-visually impaired people. As methodology I used an independent sample T-test. During the test, the participants followed a specifically-designed question protocol asking, e.g. to identify the name of the medicine. Other questions were, ‘How can you identify the packaging?’, ‘What’s the expiry date?’ … and so on. I recorded the participants’ reaction time for reading the packaging. At the end all data was translated into statistics. Visually impaired participants spent, as anticipated, more time to read and understand the medical label on the packaging than the non-visually impaired participants. But the times to read the packaging information were statistically acceptable as compared to the typical population. The medical information on the Paracetamol box prototype was clear to decipher and the Braille letters were, according to participants, properly spaced. At the end of the trial, visually impaired participants were highly satisfied with the packaging design and they found the additional medical label very helpful.

Thesis structure (click to enlarge)

How has the project influenced or changed you on a personal and philosophical level?

Gigg: The project influenced my personal and philosophical level because when I design something, I generally design things for people who can see my design, but good design must be able to be used by everybody. Design is not exclusive to specific groups. This project made me change my design perspective. Design does not need to be made of high technology or fabricated by complex machines. Such approaches are useless if the cost of design becomes too expensive. Design can be simple, but it must be helpful and accessible to everybody in society.

INTERVIEW 2: Matthew Spaulding: Commercializing Entomophagy (Eating Insects)

To promote eating insects on a commercial scale is a rather unusual project. How did you come up with the idea?

Matthew : Unfortunately, the idea didn’t come easy to me. I was already several weeks into the research of a different topic that I wasn’t too enthusiastic about. Even though I was several weeks into my research, I was looking to change the topic. That’s when I decided to watch a couple of TED-Talk videos, something that I like to do in my spare time. One of the videos that I clicked on had to do with the subject of entomophagy, the practice of consuming insects as food. The presentation was truly eye-opening. After watching the presentation, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I became fascinated with the idea of entomophagy and how it could possibly be introduced to Western consumers on a commercial scale.

Many people may feel disgusted by the idea of eating insects in their daily diet. What is your answer to this objection?

Matthew : Disgust and the psychology behind it is another fascinating subject all by itself. Through the course of my project, I made sure to look into how disgust works and how it could be managed so that insects could be more palatable to Western consumers. Disgust, a natural reaction that once functioned as a mechanism of survival and defense against possible pathogens and disease, present in bad sources of food, has evolved into an emotion. The development of disgust happens at a very young age, usually right around the time children start using the term “cooties,” [a body louse, or a children’s term for an imaginary germ or repellent quality transmitted by obnoxious or slovenly people] which is a term that elicits the emotion of disgust. Because of this original development, this emotion is subject to being morphed and formed through social and cultural pressure, which means that it is possible to change the perception of disgust relating to certain items. In this case, we would need to change the perception of insects.

Since large companies and organizations have influence over the culture of which it belongs to, it is important to take the idea of entomophagy and channel it through these entities. Introducing entomophagy to Western people would require careful advertising and educational campaigns. The design of these campaigns is important because it needs to be demonstrated how appetizing and attractive insect based foods can be.

Currently, the sight of an insect often elicits the emotion of disgust; so the early stages of introducing entomophagy to Western cultures would most likely require insect based product to be processed into powders and pastes so that there are no discernible shapes of the insects are present. Mitigating the emotion of disgust in the introduction of entomophagy to Western cultures is tricky, but not impossible!

On a global scale – can design save the world? How does your project tie into this intuition?

Matthew : Wow, I think saving the world is a tall order, but I think that design definitely contributes. In my case, I think my project would have many benefits if it were implemented. There are many issues that entomophagy would combat. By the year, 2050, it is estimated that the world will have a population of nine billion people. Supporting those kinds of numbers with our current agricultural system is nearly impossible. Entomophagy would help ease the stress of feeding the rising population. Also, it is said that agriculture is the leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Traditional livestock requires vast amounts of land and resources, and it often contaminates water resources. Insects, on the other hand require very little land and resources and greenhouse gas emissions are minimal. Here is an excellent illustration of what I’m talking about:

To produce one pound of beef, 1,799 gallons of water is required. To produce one pound of crickets, only one gallon of water is required.

On top of that, crickets have half the fat and a third more protein than beef and a ton more micro nutrients. If insect based products were commercially available, access to healthy and cheap food would be more of a reality. Although it is highly improbable that westerners will trade their steaks for an all cricket diet, treating insects as a supplemental food item and easing the overwhelming dependence on traditional livestock would be a great step in reducing the environmental impact of agriculture.

What have you learned personally and on a philosophical level during this project?

Matthew : Through this project, I think I’ve come to the realization that I get a lot of satisfaction out of producing a concept that could possibly help to make the world a better place. I think with some tweaking, this would be something that I would like to pursue and push for. I’ve always had a problem of nailing down exactly what I wanted to do within the world of design, and perhaps I’ve found something here in this project.

INTERVIEW 3: Lukasz Saczek: Understanding orphanages, their underlying psychological- and human rights issues

Orphans are a highly vulnerable population. What do you think are the most misunderstood issues when people hear about orphanages in the media?

When people hear about orphanages they often have this picture in their heads of poor, sad kids who are wearing scruffy clothes and are usually malnourished. I think many Western people picture orphanages this way after seeing dramatic media footage, such as from the ex-Eastern Bloc, particularly Romania. And the biggest misconception is that people think that these kids don’t have parents. We think that they have no family, no relatives to take care of them and that’s why they are placed in an orphanage. According to the UN, 80% of children in such institutions are not actually orphans. Many children are placed in orphanages because their parents can’t afford to take care of them. Many of these children come, for example, from minority tribes, some are disabled. An estimated 374,000 children worldwide have been left without parental care due to HIV/AIDS, which are 34,8% of all orphans – and this number has been growing rapidly in the last decade.

Sometimes parents are even paid for placing their children in an orphanage. There is a great documentary available from Al Jazeera titled “Cambodian Orphan Business” that describes such criminal misuse. Some private orphanages are, sadly enough, a tourist attractions and children in need attract more tourists. Placing non-orphan children in orphanages is often supported by local officials. Instead of investigating the problem and checking why parents can’t take care of their child, officials look for the fastest and easiest solution.

Tell us about your experiences with orphanages in Thailand. Which were the most encouraging but also the most troubling findings that you have encountered?

Children have basic needs provided the least. What is troubling is that government-run orphanages actually encourage short-term visits by volunteers. There is no awareness of the psychological damage being done to children forced to form an endless series of new relationships with strangers. Part-time volunteers just come and go. Pop in, play with kids, donate, they don’t see a problem…

What can we do to avoid harm and how can we do some good when it comes to orphans?

To avoid harm is quite simple: Don’t volunteer unless you are professionally qualified to work with children. If you want to do some good, contact a reputable childcare organization and ask how you can help. When you travel and come by an orphanage, buy products from local communities because that’s probably the easiest way of support.

UNICEF recommends that tourists should refrain from visiting and donating to residential care facilities simply because ‘Hug an orphan holidays‘ create a never-ending cycle of abandonment. An average price for a one-week volunteering experience in a private orphanage in Thailand is around 400 USD and the majority of these institutions do not even require a criminal background check.

The government has a key role to play when speaking about orphans. The private childcare sector is a grey area and it urgently needs government regulation because there are too many business and non-child orientated organizations out there that take advantage of the non-regulated environment. In the north of Thailand there are about 500 private orphanages! The government must also grant equal rights to minority tribes and stop treating them as a tourist attraction. As for society, definitely the biggest challenge is accepting children with HIV/AIDS.

INTERVIEW 4: Vicky Nway: Dignified and Productive Ageing (Video Documentary)

Ageing societies are a worldwide phenomenon. Which aspects of an ageing society were most interesting in your investigation and why?

Vicky: In my research I focus specifically on Thailand and the Thai elderly. I was hoping to find out what it is like to grow old in this culture. First of all, older people are treated with great respect in my home-country, Myanmar, as well as in Thailand. Younger people like me usually pay respects to the elderly by providing for them in terms of physical goods and financially. This is known as a polite manner, but I think it undermines the ability, dignity and pride of the elderly since they start depending, knowingly or unknowingly, on the younger generation. What got me thinking was the difference between autonomous, individualized Western cultures and the interdependent Thai culture. I wanted to focus on how elderly people can grow old successfully without having to rely on anybody else and to encourage the idea that elderly people have similar abilities as compared to younger people.

Can you explain what you mean by dignified and productive ageing?

Vicky: A dignified life means that as a person grows older, he or she is able to enjoy late adulthood without worries, unhappiness or depression. It means that older people are happy with what they have achieved in their life and that they are optimistic about growing old. It also means that they are enthusiastic to spend their daily lives with their hobbies and what they intrinsically love to do in order to keep active and healthy. Productive ageing means that as a person grows older, he or she is able to spend time wisely and keeps on contributing to society. The elderly can become in fact a country’s human resource once they stay connected to their communities, be it through their knowledge, personality or their experience.

Which were your key-findings during your research?

Vicky: In my research, I interviewed older people who are still working. Some of them have to keep on working after the official retirement age since they have to support themselves or their family. Some of them have chosen to work way into their 70s or 80s because working brings out strong personalities and self-direction. I also found a fun Karaoke event for elderly people who have retired. People in such small social worlds seem to enjoy dignified lives by spending their free time following their hobbies with friends. In conclusion, I found that there are a lot of Thai elderly who are still working to support themselves.

How has the project influenced or changed you on a personal and philosophical level?

Vicky: I am surprised to see Thai elderly that have strong, positive perspectives about growing old and living dignified and productive lives. Previously, I had always assumed that the majority of Thai elderly depend on their families. Most of the people I interviewed are willing to work and to support themselves. They are proud to make a living on their own. After finishing my research, I realized that even though Thailand and Myanmar share very similar traditions and cultures, the elderly in Thailand seem more optimistic about being old as compared to the elderly population in Myanmar.

Supportive social networks that include friends, family and peer groups were particularly important. Social networks provide a person with a relief to know that friends or family are there for them when they need them. Supportive social networks contribute to psychological well-being by providing a sense of belonging. Spending time with others prevents the experience of loneliness and depression. Besides, to be there for others contributes to an increased sense of self-worth.

It is all about inequality, isn’t it? A Critique of Rawls’s Theory of Justice

Posted on October 11, 2015 by joanakompa • Tagged A Theory of Justice, Difference Principle, Immanuel Kant, inequality, John Rawls • 2 Comments

John Rawls (left) and Immanuel Kant (right)

Introduction

Inequality appears on the global stage as the evil of our time. There is hardly a single researcher or scholar who does not agree on the correlations between inequality and unjust, deeply dysfunctional societies, such as studies by Richard Wilkinson and Thomas Piketty investigate. For example, inherited wealth is a distributive problem of justice as much as inherited poverty is. Many nations struggle with the fact that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer while middle classes erode. But what is the real concern? John Rawls defined his famous ‘difference principle’ by the following terms: ‘Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: (a) They are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and (b), they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.’ (Rawls, ‘A Theory of Justice’, 1971 and ‘Political Liberalism’, 1993)

‘The Comfortably Poor’: A thought-experiment to question Rawls’s assumptions

I am proposing a thought-experiment titled ‘The Comfortably Poor’. Imagine a society where the wealthy have decided to comply with Rawls’ difference principle: They contribute a considerable amount of their wealth to the less fortunate of society and the money is spent, as intended, to balance opportunity and wealth. Most poor are alleviated in the process and they advance from being poor to being comfortably poor. They eventually enjoy the same rights to vote, the same access to education and to the job-market as everybody else, but lack the motivation, perhaps due to prior conditioning, as well as the drive and enthusiasm to advance much further. Many of the less well-off have decided to stay happily content this way, they are comfortably poor.

We may, to add a variation, even invite social mobility into the equation, such as wealthy people who decide to be rather comfortably poor than to be mind-boggling rich, or poor people who decide they’d rather be well-off. Even when satisfying the two conditions of the difference principle, society would still be trapped in a self-stabilizing inequality equilibrium. Perhaps this is all that Rawls had hoped to achieve, to avoid injustice in the form of poverty and diminished opportunities to the less fortunate.

Society, in this thought-experiment, would turn into an Aldous Huxley-like ‘Brave New World’ where justice has been served, nobody can complain to have their rights shortchanged, but the social arrangement cements de facto a hierarchical society where the difference principle has been instrumentalized by one class happily relying on another for the mutual benefit of a stable political system. (To those readers who wonder – this example is partially a parody of Thailand, where I currently reside, and where the poor are rather content since the basics of life are taken care of).

Identifying the driving forces behind justice

Before objecting to this idea on Rawls’ behalf, or giving a plethora of empirical reasons to why the example may not apply, we may consider the following: Isn’t what we are really concerned about not inequality per se, but indignity? From a Kantian perspective, what we are really concerned with are undignified living conditions that prevent people from exercising reason, and as such deprive them of freedom and autonomy. Aristotle and Kant may have both agreed that it is the active participation, the democratic practice, to make public use of one’s ability to reason, that truly empowers the less fortunate.

One could ask now where the obligation derives for the wealthy to support the less well-off. In a Kantian model it would be the original social contract which, like for Rawls, is a hypothetical and not empirical assumption. But the underlying motivation is to empower people, in the widest sense, as rational agents, not for the sake of equality but for their own. The motivation to care for the less fortunate in a Kantian model derives from achieving dignity, freedom and autonomy for all persons in general. From here not only fair redistribution, but the motive for redistribution, which is social empowerment, can be concluded. To base a theory of justice on the individual and collective faculty to reason, as well as the motivation to collectively enter into a social contract in order to escape the tyranny of a state of nature (Locke), appears to be a more defensible position rather than to postulate an imaginary veil of ignorance.

From a phenomenological perspective we may ask why should we agree to the assumption of Rawls’ ‘original position‘, the veil of ignorance, as an imaginary construct since it bears no relation to any person’s real experience? And why would we assume that people comply with the condition of equality after the veil is lifted?

The Google Classroom: How it works, what it is and what it isn’t

Posted on August 13, 2015 by joanakompa • Tagged Adobe Connect Learning, e-Learning, Google Classroom, Google classroom review, Google Education, Moodle • Leave a comment

Above: The clean GUI of the Google classroom. Besides standard themes, the header can be customized, as shown here. Students can also invite themselves via a Class Code.

Some background

The first e-learning platform I ever encountered was the Open Source project ‘Moodle’, which had been used for the University of Oxford’s undergraduate and professional training courses. However, when we tried to install and use Moodle for my college, we found it to be somehow cumbersome to install and difficult to administrate, a trade-off for its massive customizability. Moodle as a free, Open-Source product provides a highly flexible and useful e-learning platform, but requires an intense learning curve for administrators and lecturers alike. It reminded me in this regard of the Open-Source OS Linux.

Above: Moodle is a free, fully-developed and highly customizable e-learning platform (click to enlarge)

My second brush with online platforms was during my Master studies with the ‘Blackboard‘ Virtual Classroom, employed by the University of Liverpool in combination with Laureate Lens, developed by Laureate Education. Both packages are fused into a coherent and polished high-end GUI. It is one of the best solutions I have seen so far, but Blackboard requires a sizable financial commitment which not every school is ready to make. The same is true for Adobe Connect Learning, a well-developed live platform that I was introduced to during my e-tutoring training with Oxford University. When I heard about the Google Classroom I got excited. What I was looking for was a workable out-of-the-box virtual classroom, something more tangible and less time-consuming than Moodle.

What it is – In a Nutshell

The Google Classroom is an online platform that allows educators to post assignments, questions and teaching materials online, while students can submit their work in digital form and discuss their projects. The main interface between teachers and students is a stream of posted messages. Teachers can easily check which assignments have been handed in and they can correct papers using Google documents.

Getting Started within the Google World

The reason why the Google classroom is relatively easy to set up is simple: the classroom runs externally on Google servers, works via Gmail Login and is using Google Apps. It is googely all the way, so a familiarization with the basics of Google Apps is definitely a prerequisite. Students cannot use their own emails at this stage to interact with the classroom as all operations run via a customized, central URL at ‘your-domain-name.com’, which needs to be registered at a reasonable 10 Euro fee for the annual domain registration.

The Google Classroom is not a freely available application since only verified education providers qualify. Once the classroom is set up, a Google support manager is assigned to one’s case, which I found to be a great service and saving considerable time when ironing out teething problems.

Screenshot above: Creating classes and navigating between them is fairly intuitive. On the left we see the navigation bar that allows jumping to any other class quickly

Benefits and Stumbling Blocks

Student Registration and Benefits: Although advertised as being easy to apply via three different methods, is still a fair bit tricky and buggy. To start, students need to be registered as active users via the Administrator Panel, and also need to be listed as Contacts and/or registered via Google Groups. The latter I found useful since groups can be set up that match classes, making student invitations to classes easier. On my wish list would be a one-stop registration process as the current process can become tedious when student numbers become larger. Benefits for the lecturer are to be able to manage students via a centralized platform, keeping track of students’ assignments and fairly efficient grading. Students find their learning materials in a single place and they can communicate with colleagues about their ongoing projects via various communication channels. To me the biggest benefit is improved student-lecturer communication. There is, important to mention, of course no advertising in the virtual classroom. Attractive to digital natives is that student can log into the classroom via mobile apps to check for lecturers’ feedback, posting of new assignments and reminders of deadlines.

Functionality: The GUI looks polished and uncluttered and Google’s designers have done a great job in keeping things simple. The Google classroom looks beautiful. It offers the easy creation of courses, registration of students, posting of announcements and assignments, facilitation of streamed conversations and grading. Data and archived classrooms are stored on Google Drive. For close to no money, this is a considerable package.

Yet, there are some functions that I am dearly missing. In the ‘stream’ where students and lecturers post their messages it is e.g., not possible to attach documents, such as in MS-Word format, in reply to an initial post. For example, students who post an essay cannot get a corrected copy from their lecturer in the same thread, which is awkward. Only the first post allows for attachments, so the lecturer has to start a new thread to post the corrected version, which gets messy when serving an entire class. Future integration to plagiarism checkers such as Turnitin or writing support platforms such as Grammarly would be directions to extend audiences.

Above: (a) Any file-type, including video, can be posted in the stream as attachments to initial posts, (b) typical invitation list of students: the two students on top (light blue) have not logged in yet which is clearly indicated, (c) the home page gives a clear overview of all classes.

Announcements to the Class and Wish-List for Improvements: Lecturers can create and post announcements and questions easily within the stream. Eventually, like in a Facebook post, any important, overarching notification drifts further and further away as the stream grows and progresses. What I’d like to see in the future are permanent announcements that are not part of the stream and that can be set aside, such as general course-information, a detailed overview of the subject, a navigation guide for beginners or any recent notice to the entire class. The current ‘About’ tab (‘About the class’)is not sufficient and visible enough to signal students.

Fixing the three basic issues mentioned above (1. Easier student registration, 2. Enabling attachments to subsequent posts and 3. Offering permanent notifications to a class) would be on top of my wish list. I hope someone at Google is listening.

Online corrections of students’ academic assignments have the great advantage that they can be carried out far more detailed as compared to paper- assignments, especially when using review-comment functions. Detailed feedback to students is a huge argument for e-learning and also for Google’s classroom in this context. Google Classroom is using Google Documents for the commenting on and returning of students’ assignments. Note that when you save Google Documents as MS Word format, annotations and comments are translated adequately and they appear exactly as in an original MS Word review (see below). Advantages of the Google Documents application is that it allows for collaborative multi-user access to a single document and automatic cloud-backup. Disadvantage of the Google Document application is that it only works in a browser and online, Google Documents is not working offline. Editing options are not yet as refined as in MS Word. Consequentially, users may switch back and forth between formats.

Catering to Digital Natives: It took little time for my students to become friends with the Google classroom applications for mobile phones (for Android and iOS) that allow for immediate classroom access. The applications support the behavioral pattern of digital natives – quick access via mobile phones is a tremendous motivation for students to participate more regularly. Students can check quickly when assignments are due; they have instant access to learning materials and can communicate effortlessly with fellow students about their projects – Google Hangouts (supporting messaging, voice-calls and multi-user video conferencing) included.

Above: Student submission page – the lecturer knows exactly how many assignments have been turned in and by whom, allowing for the returning of and commenting on students’ work.

Conclusion: A convenient and useful tool in addition to existing face-to-face classrooms, but no stand-alone e-learning platform

I am using the Google classroom currently as a complementary tool to face-to-face, ‘analogue’ classrooms. The Google classroom is not a stand-alone e-learning platform. Users who know Moodle or Blackboard and who have become accustomed to setting up classes in orderly weekly cycles, the segmented posting of learning resources and a differentiated streaming service (inclusive of a message editor) may find these missing features a deal-breaker to employ the Google classroom. The Google classroom is definitely sophisticated enough to be used as a supporting learning tool. It is also user-friendly enough to be employed by most lecturers without demanding a steep learning curve. Latest features are publicized by Google.

Besides, we should not forget that the more we conduct classes online, the more our e-tutoring skills need to keep up with technology. Staff training is required. The tricky question for Google is to decide which age-group the Google classroom should serve as the product matures. One size does not fit all. On undergraduate level, the Google classroom seems ideal, especially for blended learning. On graduate level that requires tools for more self-directed learners and subsequently more advanced functionality (the ‘constructivist classroom‘ as guiding philosophy here), the Google classroom will definitely require more development and diversification. A last issue is privacy and liability issues in case of data loss. Institutions of Higher Learning may want to be in full charge of their data and therefore host platforms on their own servers.

Given that students have become accustomed to working online, the Google classroom provides a powerful support for face-to-face classes. For very little investment, the Google classroom is an ideal partner for blended learning and flipped classrooms. Reading the fine-print in Googles introduction pages, Google has never promised a fully working e-learning platform. Given modern teaching environments, the actual question for educators is how much more tedious and uncoordinated course-management gets by not going partially digital. School and college managers also need to take into account that administrating an online classroom requires additional time and work from staff, it is not a shiny new tool that comes entirely for free.

Joana Stella Kompa

My Blog on Applied Psychology & Education

Why are computers still so dull? Where are the thinking machines we have been promised?

Pro Singularity: The Complexity-Threshold Argument and the Reverse-Engineering Argument

The Simulation-Reality Argument

The Mind-Brain Unity Argument

The Psychological Goal-Setting Argument (Ajzen-Vygotsky Hypothesis)

Arguing for Weak AI instead

Machine Learning is not an Easy Task when there is Little Data Available and Environments are Complex – Another Argument for Weak AI

The Non-Computational Pattern Argument

The ‘Emotional Intelligence’ and Body Argument

The Multimodal Argument – The Flexibility of Mind

The Qualia Argument

Anthropomorphized Technology: AI, Gender and Social Attitudes

Summary

Towards a Sustainable Society: Best Student Entries of Fall 2015 (Multimedia & Visual Communication Research)

INTERVIEW 1: Maneerat Sartwattanarod (Gigg): The ‘Braille Pill’ Project – Developing Braille-based medical packaging

INTERVIEW 2: Matthew Spaulding: Commercializing Entomophagy (Eating Insects)

INTERVIEW 3: Lukasz Saczek: Understanding orphanages, their underlying psychological- and human rights issues

INTERVIEW 4: Vicky Nway: Dignified and Productive Ageing (Video Documentary)

It is all about inequality, isn’t it? A Critique of Rawls’s Theory of Justice

Introduction

‘The Comfortably Poor’: A thought-experiment to question Rawls’s assumptions

Identifying the driving forces behind justice

The Google Classroom: How it works, what it is and what it isn’t

September 2016
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Aug
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30