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Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

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Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#111

Post by autoexec »

Silverback_VII wrote: post #89

When I read it correctly, then one should correct these misperceptions in long-term attitude change when the resulting political mindset runs counter to one's own... The fact stated at the beginning, that people adopt what they believe to be the general trend, is what's truly frightening since it can so easily be exploited by mass media and algorithms.

> that people adopt what they believe to be the general trend, is what's truly frightening

We've known that for forever though. Advertising exploits that fact to great effect. A lot of people either go with the crowd or have viable alternatives crowded/drowned out by what's popular for being popular. It makes media consolidation a huge concern. It's also why the entertainment industry is so desperate to fight piracy. It's less about the sales figures than it is about the power to act as a gatekeeper that shapes our culture and dictates how/when we get access to it.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#112

Post by vermote »

imgabe wrote: post #106
somenameforme wrote: post #84

There is a severe demographic problem with this study (among others). A current trend in the social sciences is using Amazon Mechanical Turk and Prolific to run surveys. These sites are based around paying people pennies to compete menial tasks (like complete surveys), and populated with large numbers of "professional" menial task executers. This study offered the big bucks of $1.50 - $2.25. There are two major probl…

I wonder if you could get good survey data by disguising it as a Buzzfeed quiz on Facebook. Just make the title something like "Which Kardashian are you?", then ask whatever questions you want and randomly select a Kardashian at the end.

I believe that's what Cambridge Analytica did.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#113

Post by neilwilson »

somenameforme wrote: post #84

There is a severe demographic problem with this study (among others). A current trend in the social sciences is using Amazon Mechanical Turk and Prolific to run surveys. These sites are based around paying people pennies to compete menial tasks (like complete surveys), and populated with large numbers of "professional" menial task executers. This study offered the big bucks of $1.50 - $2.25. There are two major probl…

There's also the perennial problem that polls are not public opinion.

The biases within polls are legion and difficult to eliminate in any society with privacy provisions.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#114

Post by watwut »

jesuscript wrote: post #94
barrysteve wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ancient greeks did not have this relationship to (written) knowledge. Greeks had to have a human vouch for the validity of the written document. Tying truth to written history is noble but also flawed.

It would hurt historians feelings to know that they are essentially just, what we call today, “hot takes” on history. It’s often well written and credentialed (appeal to authority), but ultimately it’s just one dude’s hot take on events. For example, many people in America have a hot-take about what life is like in China. How? We heard it from somewhere, never lived a day there. Can’t be that simple right? You say yo…

> It would hurt historians feelings to know that they are essentially just, what we call today, “hot takes” on history.

Interestingly, the actual historians I came accros would not be shocked by such claim at all. They do make their own claims of that sort.

However, arbitrary fans of Ancient Greece would be shocked.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#115

Post by rwmj »

exo-pla-net wrote: post #108
somenameforme wrote: post #84

There is a severe demographic problem with this study (among others). A current trend in the social sciences is using Amazon Mechanical Turk and Prolific to run surveys. These sites are based around paying people pennies to compete menial tasks (like complete surveys), and populated with large numbers of "professional" menial task executers. This study offered the big bucks of $1.50 - $2.25. There are two major probl…

The need for representative sampling is something understood by first year undergraduates on first exposure to the concept. What you've written is the reddit equivalent of criticizing a study with "correlation does not imply causation". Yeah, scientists are familiar with the idea, believe it or not. Scientists in fact go to great lengths to ensure their sampling is representative, and studies published in good journa…

I think his point is that it's impossible to normalise such a sample. For example if I sampled only toddlers about their attitudes to ice cream then there's no way to extrapolate from that sample to the general population, and it's the same thing for "people who are willing to fill in a survey for $2".

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#116

Post by red_admiral »

somenameforme wrote: post #84

There is a severe demographic problem with this study (among others). A current trend in the social sciences is using Amazon Mechanical Turk and Prolific to run surveys. These sites are based around paying people pennies to compete menial tasks (like complete surveys), and populated with large numbers of "professional" menial task executers. This study offered the big bucks of $1.50 - $2.25. There are two major probl…

It's at least a small step up from when many studies of human behaviour were done on psychology freshmen.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#117

Post by MichaelCollins »

bowsamic wrote: post #97
somenameforme wrote: post #84

There is a severe demographic problem with this study (among others). A current trend in the social sciences is using Amazon Mechanical Turk and Prolific to run surveys. These sites are based around paying people pennies to compete menial tasks (like complete surveys), and populated with large numbers of "professional" menial task executers. This study offered the big bucks of $1.50 - $2.25. There are two major probl…

It always amazes me how such studies are simply left up to the academics, because clearly taking representative samples of the population will need some kind of help from the government to organise it

I think it's not possible to do ethically or practically, because only some sorts of people will willingly subject themselves to the testing, examination and prodding of of social sciences, even when bribed. And if you tried to force it on them using a government, which would be unethical, you still have the practical problem of the data you get from people under duress being garbage.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#118

Post by MichaelCollins »

exo-pla-net wrote: post #108
somenameforme wrote: post #84

There is a severe demographic problem with this study (among others). A current trend in the social sciences is using Amazon Mechanical Turk and Prolific to run surveys. These sites are based around paying people pennies to compete menial tasks (like complete surveys), and populated with large numbers of "professional" menial task executers. This study offered the big bucks of $1.50 - $2.25. There are two major probl…

The need for representative sampling is something understood by first year undergraduates on first exposure to the concept. What you've written is the reddit equivalent of criticizing a study with "correlation does not imply causation". Yeah, scientists are familiar with the idea, believe it or not. Scientists in fact go to great lengths to ensure their sampling is representative, and studies published in good journa…

Understanding the need for representative samples is not the same as actually getting representative samples. It's not a problem of scientists being ignorant or lazy or even underfunded. They know what they need, and they simply cannot get it. They try to make do anyway, but the quality of their work still suffers because of these factors which are out of their control.

Not all fields of inquiry are equally tractable to the scientific method, so they should not be treated with equal reverence.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#119

Post by MichaelCollins »

lettergram wrote: post #47

I think this is a product of mass social media and mass media. Effectively, we amplify propaganda one way or another. It leads to false impressions and we are unable to make decisions based off real information. This survey (which imo is not very robust) simply highlights the fact we are uninformed as a population. This is a failure primarily of our news media (the big 5) and education. Easy example, we believe mass…

> Easy example, we believe mass shootings are far more common and dangerous than they actually are. A child is ~100x more likely to die from a drug overdose than a mass shooting, and ~10x from a car crash. Yet our perception is skewed because of what we see in the news / shared.

And all of those scenarios are less common than this one: The child doesn't die for any reason: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

I think we have a bias for focusing on rare tragedies than the common mundane outcomes.

Re: Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

#120

Post by [deleted] »

incone123 wrote: post #105
bowsamic wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always amazes me how such studies are simply left up to the academics, because clearly taking representative samples of the population will need some kind of help from the government to organise it

Probably just requires a bigger budget than most academics have. I got paid £50 to spend half an hour giving feedback on a new website, in a 1:1 conversation with a researcher. Granted the funding was from government, but Kantar did the organisation side.

[deleted]
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