Anne Scherer Why were more honest with machines than people TED
Transcriber:
Now, a few years back, I was having
a barbecue with friends and family.
As usual, we talked about the weather,
the good food or TV shows to watch.
So nothing out of the ordinary
until one attendee casually mentioned
that he and his wife
hadn’t had sex in a long time.
As you can imagine,
what followed was an awkward silence.
Until a six-year-old boy
attending the barbecue with his parents
blurted out that his parents
had lots of sex
and he could hear them all the time.
And then the barbecue continued
as if nothing had happened.
Now, when I’m not having barbecues,
I am researching how people
interact with each other
and how that transfers
to their interactions with technologies,
so not all too surprisingly,
after this very unique
social interaction at the barbecue,
I was left wondering why we, the audience,
were so greatly ignoring what the adult
so openly shared with us that evening.
So why the silence and then
the laughter at the boy’s comment?
Well, both of them
were breaking a social rule:
never talk about sex,
money or politics at a dinner table.
We assume that an adult
knows this rule and sticks to it.
So when such expectations are broken,
we sanction the offender accordingly –
in our case, with ignorance.
When a child, however, breaks such a rule,
we attribute this to their naive
understanding of our social manners
and up to a certain age at least,
do not openly sanction them for it.
Clearly, there is no official rule book
for socially appropriate behaviors
or even socially accepted dinner topics.
In fact, our social norms
are usually unwritten codes of conduct,
and they change over time
as we as a society change and learn.
Less than a year ago, for instance,
it was considered impolite
not to shake hands
when introducing yourself to someone.
A few months and the worldwide
spread of the coronavirus later
and shaking hands
may be something to be frowned upon
and maybe even a thing of the past.
The way we learn these social rules then
is mostly by social rewards
and social punishments.
Now, as social animals,
we aim for social approval
and want to avoid other’s disapproval.
So we act in a way
that is socially accepted
and present ourselves
in a socially desirable way to others.
So we want to be seen as an individual
that is smart, successful,
sporty and active, creative, empathic
and possibly all that at once.
Now, through social media,
our strive for social approval,
and with it, our need
for self-presentation and perfection
has skyrocketed.
Clearly, there is a flip side
to all of this.
In any social interaction,
we do not only look for others' approval,
but we also constantly fear
other’s disapproval
when we cannot live up
to their expectations.
Just consider an adult
with incontinence problems
or a drug addiction.
If he or she had to talk
to a health care professional,
what would you expect to find?
Or if a soldier returned from combat
and had to talk
about their fears or problems,
do you think they would open up easily?
A team of USC researchers
examined just that.
So they looked at the data
from the US Army.
Traditionally, soldiers
had to be interviewed
by a human health care professional
when returning from combat
to check if everything is OK.
Now, interestingly,
the researchers found that soldiers
hardly reported any problems
after their returns.
Surely many of them were truly fine,
but the researchers also suspected
that many soldiers did not dare
to share their problems openly.
After all, soldiers are trained
to be strong and brave individuals
that learn not to show any weaknesses.
So openly admitting
to have health problems,
to have trouble sleeping
or to have nightmares
is not something easy to do for soldiers.
The question then ultimately becomes
how can we help individuals
open up more easily
and worry less
about the judgment of others?
Well, remember what I said earlier.
We expect social evaluation
in any social interaction.
So how about we remove
the social from the interaction?
This is exactly
what the team in the US did.
In fact, they developed
a virtual interviewer called SimSensei.
So SimSensei is a digital avatar
that has a humanlike appearance
and can interact with clients
through natural conversations.
Now, when returning from combat,
soldiers were now interviewed
by the digital avatar
instead of that human
health care professional.
And what happened?
Well, once SimSensei was introduced,
soldiers reported more health problems,
like having nightmares
or trouble sleeping.
So machines can help
remove the social from the equation
and help people open up more easily.
But careful, not all machines
are created equal.
Considering the tremendous advancements
in technologies like computer graphics
or natural language processing,
machines have become
increasingly humanlike.
The question then ultimately becomes,
which rules do we apply
in these interactions?
Do we still apply social rules
when we interact with humanlike machines?
So do we start to worry
about social judgment again?
This is exactly what I examine
in my research.
Together with colleagues,
we have developed a series of chatbots.
These chatbots were programmed
to simulate text-based conversations
and they were designed
to be either very social and humanlike
or very functional and machine-like.
So, for instance,
our humanlike bots
use so-called speed disfluencies
and social language cues,
like these “ohos”, “ahas”, “hmms”
we humans love to use in our conversations
to signal our presence
to conversation partners.
In contrast, our machine-like bots
lacked such social cues
and simply kept to the talking points.
Since we were interested
in how much people would open up
in these different conversations,
we ask participants a number of questions,
which gradually grew
more and more personal,
up to the point
where we would ask participants
to share possibly very delicate
information about themselves.
Now, considering the findings
from prior research,
such as the one from the US Army before,
we expected that people
would apply more social rules
in their interactions
with these humanlike bots
and act accordingly.
So what did we find?
Well, exactly that.
So participants interacting
with our humanlike bots
were more concerned
about social evaluation
and as a result of this
social apprehension,
they also gave more
socially desirable responses.
Let me give you an example.
One of the most delicate questions
that we asked participants
was the number of prior
sex partners they had had.
When interacting with our humanlike bot,
men reported to have
significantly more prior sex partners
and women reported
to have significantly less
than those men and women
interacting with our mechanistic bot.
So what does this all tell us?
Well, first, men want to look good
by having more prior sex partners
and women by having less.
Clearly, this already says a lot
about what the different sexes
consider socially desirable
and how our expectations
in society still differ across genders.
But this opens up a whole new topic
that I will better leave
for other experts to discuss.
Second, and maybe more importantly,
from a consumer psychology perspective.
People open up more easily
when they interact with machines
that are apparently just that – machines.
Today, a lot of sweat, money and tears
is put into making machines
basically indistinguishable from us.
Now, this research can show
that sometimes letting a machine
be a machine is actually a good thing.
Which brings me to my third point.
These machine interactions
have been highly criticized at times.
So you may have heard
that Siri, Alexa or others
make your kids rude or impolite.
Hopefully, this research can show you
a great upside
of these machine interactions.
In times of social media
and our constant hunt for the next “like,”
machines can give us grownups –
help us find that inner child again
and give our constant need
for self-presentation and perfection
a time-out.
For once, we do not need to worry
if the number of prior sex partners
is too high or too low,
and instead it is OK
to simply be who we are.
Ultimately, then, I think
that these machines can remind us
of a central element of what makes
a good conversation partner:
being nonjudgmental.
so the next time you might encounter
a unique social situation
like mine at the barbecue,
try to be less judgmental
when another person openly shares
their thoughts, feelings
and problems with you.
Many machines do this already,
and maybe so should we.
Thank you very much.