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XKCD: Research Ethics

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Re: XKCD: Research Ethics

#11

Post by panarky »

eridius wrote: post #10
panarky wrote: post #9

Companies have been purposely making people feel bad about themselves for a very long time. Ads intentionally make people feel ugly, lazy, stupid, fat, dirty, smelly, dandruffy, lonely and ashamed so they'll buy whatever product is on offer. Commerce is all about manipulating people for profit. I'm not a Facebook fan, but tell me how this is worse than standard operating procedure with every other consumer product?

Because those aren't psychological experiments. Nobody's claiming it's ethical for an ad company to make you feel bad about yourself, but that's not really the point here. The point is that there are strict ethics rules for running experiments, and one of those rules is, except for a limited exception (that does not apply), the subjects need to be knowingly taking part in the experiment.

Advertisements for consumer products are effective precisely because they cause psychological and behavioral changes in consumers.

Companies rigorously test and refine ads to manipulate emotions and behavior on a scale two or three orders of magnitude greater than Facebook's experiment.

Is Facebook's experiment different because they published the results in an academic journal?

Re: XKCD: Research Ethics

#12

Post by tsycho »

I found this article quite insightful on this topic: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/07/01/faceboo...

Here's my TLDR... If this research enables Facebook to curate people's feeds to make them happier, would we consider the cost acceptable? Does Facebook even have the right to do so? Is it ethical to hide your friend's serious post or cry for help and show you cat pics, even if that will make you happier in the short run? Separately, Danah talks about how the media's hypocritical outrage over this is likely going to lead to Facebook and other companies still doing a bunch of unethical things to increase their revenues, but just becoming more secretive about it.

Seriously, read the article. Don't stop with my inadequate tldr.

Re: XKCD: Research Ethics

#13

Post by hyperpape »

panarky wrote: post #11
eridius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because those aren't psychological experiments. Nobody's claiming it's ethical for an ad company to make you feel bad about yourself, but that's not really the point here. The point is that there are strict ethics rules for running experiments, and one of those rules is, except for a limited exception (that does not apply), the subjects need to be knowingly taking part in the experiment.

Advertisements for consumer products are effective precisely because they cause psychological and behavioral changes in consumers. Companies rigorously test and refine ads to manipulate emotions and behavior on a scale two or three orders of magnitude greater than Facebook's experiment. Is Facebook's experiment different because they published the results in an academic journal?

I tend to think this experiment is a good example of where informed consent is a limited model. Nonetheless, academic researchers are committed to not do this kind of thing, and breaking your commitments isn't awesome.

Re: XKCD: Research Ethics

#14

Post by tedsanders »

eridius wrote: post #10
panarky wrote: post #9

Companies have been purposely making people feel bad about themselves for a very long time. Ads intentionally make people feel ugly, lazy, stupid, fat, dirty, smelly, dandruffy, lonely and ashamed so they'll buy whatever product is on offer. Commerce is all about manipulating people for profit. I'm not a Facebook fan, but tell me how this is worse than standard operating procedure with every other consumer product?

Because those aren't psychological experiments. Nobody's claiming it's ethical for an ad company to make you feel bad about yourself, but that's not really the point here. The point is that there are strict ethics rules for running experiments, and one of those rules is, except for a limited exception (that does not apply), the subjects need to be knowingly taking part in the experiment.

I don't think that's generally true though.

Ad companies run experiments on us all the time. When they A/B test across different groups of consumers to see the effectiveness of an ad, they are running a psychological experiment on us without our consent (asking, "how will exposure to this ad affect a person's likelihood of buying our product?").

I think the rules that you're referring to are for federally funded research only. But there's a large body of commercial research that is constantly experimenting on us without our consent.

Re: XKCD: Research Ethics

#15

Post by jessriedel »

eridius wrote: post #10
panarky wrote: post #9

Companies have been purposely making people feel bad about themselves for a very long time. Ads intentionally make people feel ugly, lazy, stupid, fat, dirty, smelly, dandruffy, lonely and ashamed so they'll buy whatever product is on offer. Commerce is all about manipulating people for profit. I'm not a Facebook fan, but tell me how this is worse than standard operating procedure with every other consumer product?

Because those aren't psychological experiments. Nobody's claiming it's ethical for an ad company to make you feel bad about yourself, but that's not really the point here. The point is that there are strict ethics rules for running experiments, and one of those rules is, except for a limited exception (that does not apply), the subjects need to be knowingly taking part in the experiment.

You're not explaining the inconsistency, you're just giving it a name. If someone says "why are the sentences for crack cocaine 5 times longer than for regular cocaine?", it's silly to answer "because these are the rules we have, and they were passed by official people".

Re: XKCD: Research Ethics

#16

Post by SilasX »

eridius wrote: post #10
panarky wrote: post #9

Companies have been purposely making people feel bad about themselves for a very long time. Ads intentionally make people feel ugly, lazy, stupid, fat, dirty, smelly, dandruffy, lonely and ashamed so they'll buy whatever product is on offer. Commerce is all about manipulating people for profit. I'm not a Facebook fan, but tell me how this is worse than standard operating procedure with every other consumer product?

Because those aren't psychological experiments. Nobody's claiming it's ethical for an ad company to make you feel bad about yourself, but that's not really the point here. The point is that there are strict ethics rules for running experiments, and one of those rules is, except for a limited exception (that does not apply), the subjects need to be knowingly taking part in the experiment.

I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to say "X is wrong, unless you're doing it for a psychological experiment".

You should be at least as much worried about "manipulating human behavior for profit" as you are about "manipulating human behavior in order to publish the most effective ways of doing so"; otherwise, you're just letting yourself get tripped up by the labels.

Re: XKCD: Research Ethics

#17

Post by qu4z-2 »

I wonder whether this study really shows what people are inferring from it. Aside from the somewhat unreliable metrics ("not happy" contains happy => positive!), an increase in negative posts when being shown negative posts could subconsciously promote Facebook as a place to vent, etc. I'm sure the study addresses these things, but as usual the summary is "Seeing unhappy things on Facebook makes people unhappy!"

Re: XKCD: Research Ethics

#18

Post by click170 »

jessriedel wrote: post #15
eridius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because those aren't psychological experiments. Nobody's claiming it's ethical for an ad company to make you feel bad about yourself, but that's not really the point here. The point is that there are strict ethics rules for running experiments, and one of those rules is, except for a limited exception (that does not apply), the subjects need to be knowingly taking part in the experiment.

You're not explaining the inconsistency, you're just giving it a name. If someone says "why are the sentences for crack cocaine 5 times longer than for regular cocaine?", it's silly to answer "because these are the rules we have, and they were passed by official people".

I would postulate it's because people feel uncomfortable in situations where they are made to feel like lab rats, and that as a society we decided that these rules should be in place so that people who do not have the same views do not abuse those of us who do.

Re: XKCD: Research Ethics

#19

Post by baddox »

panarky wrote: post #9

Companies have been purposely making people feel bad about themselves for a very long time. Ads intentionally make people feel ugly, lazy, stupid, fat, dirty, smelly, dandruffy, lonely and ashamed so they'll buy whatever product is on offer. Commerce is all about manipulating people for profit. I'm not a Facebook fan, but tell me how this is worse than standard operating procedure with every other consumer product?

There's also a major definitional problem with the concept of "manipulating people for profit." Using the most broad definition of "manipulation," most people are okay with some forms of manipulation, and upset with others, although to me the distinction is not very clear.

A sign on a freeway incidating that a certain restaurant is 1 mile ahead probably wouldn't upset many people, but an advertisement for a mobile game might. Both are blatant attempts to manipulate people.

Re: XKCD: Research Ethics

#20

Post by mkal_tsr »

panarky wrote: post #9

Companies have been purposely making people feel bad about themselves for a very long time. Ads intentionally make people feel ugly, lazy, stupid, fat, dirty, smelly, dandruffy, lonely and ashamed so they'll buy whatever product is on offer. Commerce is all about manipulating people for profit. I'm not a Facebook fan, but tell me how this is worse than standard operating procedure with every other consumer product?

> I'm not a Facebook fan, but tell me how this is worse than standard operating procedure with every other consumer product?

When I see an ad, I know that the company wants me to give them my money. When I see my friend post something on Facebook, they want to communicate or connect in some way ... note that it is not a monetary desire to buy something from a friend, but to connect with them on a human and emotional level. Manipulating the news feed so that there is an appearance of more or less contentment among my friends when that is not what they intended for others to see is manipulative. I've always had "most recent" instead of "top stories" so this wouldn't have affected me, but to imply that it's just like an ad is utter horseshit.

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