But it is rarely easy to take a decision on technical questions. Energy choices (nuclear or not?), food decisions (GMO), medical topics (assisted reproduction, genetic screening), social issues (migration) are just a few examples of issues that inflame or have inflamed the public debate. Unfortunately these issues are often treated following more an emotional rather than a scientific approach by the various mass media. Just think of the anti-GMO campaign that rarely touches technical topics.

The risk that we deal with in these cases is that of letting decisions be taken with criteria that are far from science, or delegated to "technicians" (the famous "experts"), or, even worse, taken according to emotional pressure.

Surely, we need an informed, i.e. a knowledge-based approach  in order to form a correct opinion. But often this transfer of knowledge takes place with the philosophy of the "empty vessel". Citizens are seen as people with a handicap (the lack of knowledge) that must be overcome, and the instrument to do this is similar to the transfer of liquids: television, radio, newspapers, and conferences. All channels that are essentially one-way and  "pour" knowledge into citizens.

The Science Cafés

The Science Cafés were in part born to address this need. A Science Café is a kind of anti-conference: there are experts and the public, but we try to ensure that the debate is driven by the public, rather than by experts. For this purpose, we try to organize the event in a place where the citizens, rather than experts, feel "at home". So, when possible, the event is not organized in a conference room but rather a pub, a coffee or even a market. Even the physical layout of the spectators must encourage participation, so one have to bring experts and the public on the same level, encourage discussion by seating people at cocktail tables, and maybe offer them some drinks. This formula is obviously not unique: there are so many similar experiments as "science in the market" or "a pint of science."

In particular, our experience as a Science Café Florence-Prato(www.caffescienza.it 10 years of activity, more than 120 events) allowed us to explore various "modalities" of participatory communication. For example, we found that depending on the theme one has to use different "scenarios". When citizens already know a topic, one can immediately start with the debate, in the  "pure" spirit of Science Cafés, and we usually use two experts with different profiles to cover most aspects of the theme. But when instead the theme, still known, requires a technical introduction, it is preferable to have a single speaker, who is granted more time, a mixture of a conference and a Science Café. Obviously, also in this case, ample time is left for debates.

We also worked (in collaboration with the CDSC - Interdepartmental Centre for the Study of Complex Dynamics of the University of Florence,  www.csdc.it, with our sister association FormaScienza Rome, www.formascienza.org, with Milan Science Café, www.caffescienzamilano.it, and with the University of Bari), to create a network of Italian Science Cafés: www.caffescientifici.it.

A similar experience at European level was part of a European project, SciCafe(www.scicafe.eu), within which we also experimented with Internet support to the Science Café.

The idea is that the organization a Science Café is a daunting task, and even when the audience responds enthusiastically, we only touch at most one hundred people. In addition, rural areas, or remote villages have difficulty in participating in this kind of meeting, and also in organizing them on site because for them it is much more difficult to have the experts. Therefore, for many years, we are video-recording events, publishing them on YouTube, and in recent years we streamed the debates, with the opportunity for the public to directly participate in the debate. This tool has been perfected within another European project, SciCafe2.0 (www.scicafe2-0.eu).

Finally, in five years we conducted a radio transmission (RadioMoka) on a local radio station of Florence (Novaradio, www.novaradio.info). Despite the radio is a rather old and one-way media, it still remains the least invasive one and the one most apt to integration with the Internet.

Citizen Science

One can go further. Citizens may be called to directly participate in the scientific activities and also in some way to drive them. The easiest way is to let them act as evaluators. Many projects that receive public support (both national and European) often use some of the funds for the "dissemination" of their results, but this happens again one-way: informative articles, gadgets, advertising material. It would be much more productive if they spend some of their time and energy to meet the public, explain what they are doing and receive opinions, suggestions and participation. This obviously needs a network connection between projects and public, a task that could be carried out also by the Science Cafés, in particular by using the networks linking the different realities.

More and more often we talk about smart-cities and collective awareness. These are usually tools of investigation or actions that have a social impact often imply social connection mediated by Internet. But even in this case the citizens are often viewed as "targets," or as a "substrate", and rarely as proponents. The move from "smart cities" to "smart citizens", i.e., involving citizens in data acquisition and in the processing of collective intelligence, could trigger a real epocal change.

However, this implies that the proponents have to be prepared to adjust their action depending on the stimuli received.

Here too, the Science Cafés could play a role as a link between the projects and the population. To do this, citizens should be involved from the earliest stages of design, so that the projects will acquire a truly participatory character. But even the simple invitation to people to evaluate the project - when it can still be modified and adapted, has an important participatory significance.

In some cases, projects provide a direct involvement of the population, for example for measurements using low-cost sensors, or by providing personal information may help to solve collective problems, such as traffic problems, emergency management, to establish the virtuous competitions on energy saving and waste management, and so on. The weak point of these projects is typically that of the recruitment of citizens, in part because it is unlikely that these projects have access to efficient communication channels, and also because such projects are often felt "distant", their purpose is not understood, or not adapted to the collective needs. Again, participatory tool like Science Cafés could be extremely useful.

Science Shops

Finally, projects and public research institutions could, in the spirit of "science shop", be designed to “serve” the citizens, investigating in a scientific way topics suggested "by the base", for example in terms of pollution, welfare, safety. Again, we need collective tools to stimulate, refine and manage these proposals. The Science Cafés may have a useful role as a mediator between research organizations and citizenship.

The cognitive roots of participation

One may wonder why citizens should be willing to participate in such projects, which often involve a personal commitment and that do not typically offer direct revenue. The theme is obviously very broad and we cannot address it here in detail, but it definitely has to do with the emergence of cooperation, with the role of the reputation and the mechanism of formation of group opinions.

The basic idea is that humans have a certain tendency to cooperation, depending on the type of context. This is a problem that has been studied both by psychologists, social scientists and by biologists. Summarizing a famous essay (which is also contested) [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/314/5805/1560.short], humans can cooperate (as indeed do many animals) because of their relationship kinship, because they expect a direct or indirect reciprocity, because of the structure of social relationships (in particular the role of reputation), or because, indirectly, the group consisting of co-operators have an advantage over those that include both co-operators and profiteers.

Obviously these factors (except the first) are present in all cases where we observe collective elaboration, participation and cooperation, and we must keep them in mind when it comes to designing with a social cooperative. This is why it is so important to treat the appearance of the group and encourage the active participation of the people, recognizing the personal contributions.

Another important question is how to participate. Our communication skills and participatory engagement have developed in contexts very different from the current ones, especially very different from the Internet. We are used to talking to three to four partners (a discussion group), to work in small groups of 7-12 people, and we feel intimidated by larger groups, we feel like "crowd". In addition, our cognitive skills usually include a group of personal contacts of the order of 150 people (Dunbar's number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number).

Finally, studies on communication modalities show that during the assimilation of information, such as when we watch TV or even assist a conference, we are unable to actively process the incoming material, because we cannot pause the information flow to discuss it with some colleagues

These elements should be taken into account in the design phase of a communication tool, such as the Science Café and its extension on the web. For example, the arrangement of people in a science café should encourage the formation of discussion groups, placing the people around the tables, and one should encourage the collective processing by providing breaks (where maybe one can order a beer). How to “port” these concepts on the web, is one of the topics addressed by the project SciCafe2.0.

Let’s discuss it together

To focus on this set of proposals, we would like to use the same Science Café instrument, and therefore we would like to organize an open meeting on the occasion of the festival of science in Genoa, where all the people who may be involved are invited: associations of science popularization, research organizations, researchers and citizens. To ensure the maximum participation, the event will be streamed, and various methods of distant participation will be used.

by Altini Andrea, Biagioni Debora, Canosa Carlotta, Cassina Giulia, Duradoni Mirko, Fisico Alice

Introduction

The ways humans beings behaves, thinks, and makes decisions isn’t always a rational way. Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory construct (1943) affirms that those aspects may be influenced by cognitive heuristics, which comes from both individual’s characteristics and external environment. According to social heuristics hypothesis, the social environment influences those process through the internalization of social norms in the form of automatic behavioural dispositions. (Peysakhovich et al., 2013; Peysakhovich et al., 2014). The emergence of the Information Communication Technologies has created a new field of interactions for humans beings. The Social identity model of deindividuation effects affirms that the anonymousness given to people by some ICT, strengthen people’s affiliation to social norms (Postmes, 1998). Thanks to SIDE’s researchers evidences, it will be interesting understanding how people behave in a virtual contest.

Reference Model/Theory

The theory of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) considers dissonance as a psychological state of tension that individuals are motivated to minimize. Such phenomenon takes place when an individual entertains ideas or behaviours that are psychologically inconsistent.
More specifically it can consist in a logical incompatibility, related to past behaviours and cultural norms. Already the classical studies of Sherif (1932) underline the influence of social norms on human behaviours. Such norms, which represent the expectations of a social group in relation to its members, provide the parameters to which individuals can link their interpretation of the world, and against which they shape their behaviours and notions.
Social norms in fact allow individuals to behave effectively, to build and maintain relations, and to manage their self-image (Cialdini & Trost 1998). Based on this evidence it can be stated that actions or perceptions that are inconsistent with social norms produce a dissonance, especially when they are internalized and become part of the individual consciousness. The discomfort produced by this inconsistency is reduced, as assumed by Festinger’s theory, by modifying the weakest element in the dissonance.

Hypotheses and Aims

We assume that in the unfrustated game condition the participants will not experience dissonance, because interacting with other individuals in that circumstance does not conflict with social norms. On the other hand, in the frustrated game condition, participants will experience dissonance between their behaviour and social norms, according to these two aspects, they act and evaluate their actions. Therefore, more they will interact in the frustrated condition, more they will rework the psychic structure against the weaker element, in this case, the opinion.

Hypothesis: In the frustrated game condition there is a statistically significant linear relationship between activities in the public radar (contact) and activities in the private radar (opinion).

Data Analysis and Results

The variable activity in the public radar has been transformed using the natural logarithm due to the inadequacy of the values of skewness and kurtosis. Instead the activity in the private radar presented values of skewness and kurtosis adequate. Both variables were continuous and on an appropriate scale of measure, thus we proceeded to the analysis of the Bravais-Pearson’s correlation coefficient.

In the frustrated game condition exists a statistically significant linear relationship (r = .40; p <.05) between the activity in the public radar (M = 1.88; SD = 1.82) and the activity in the private radar (M = 6.88; SD = 6.72). When the activity in the public radar increases also the activity in the private radar raises. In the unfrustrated game there is no statistically significant linear relationship (r = .30; ns) between the activity in the public radar (M = 2.61; SD = 3.66) and the private radar’s activity (M = 7.41; SD = 6:14).

Discussion and future perspectives

The correlation between the activity in the public radar and the activity in the private radar emerges only in the frustrated game condition. We can assume that only in this condition the contacts occurred through approaches in public radar affected the perception or the declaration of closeness of opinion of the participant. This result can be attributed to the effect of the instruction. In the unfrustrated condition the participants are free to get in contact with other individuals solely on the basis of their own desire of self-expression. In the frustrated game condition the same action to get in contact with other participants can also be attributed to the received instruction. We suppose that the subjects, unable to rationalize their behaviour, try to re-establish a cognitive consonance changing the weakest element in order to restore their sense of self-esteem, in this case the perception of others’ opinion, through the movement in the private radar. This action is visible only to the one who made the movement and from nobody else, so we can assume that this action could act as a reflection of the rearrangement of the psychic structure. People, despite the anonymity offered by ICT, regulates themselves in their action on the basis of introjected social norms. Useful for future research will be to determine which ergonomic features of ICT, as well as the real-life contexts, make it possible to exploit this phenomenon of self-regulation and when this can lead to self-justification of amoral or dishonest behaviour.

Bibliography

Cialdini, R. B., Trost, M. R. (1998). Social influence: Social norms, conformity and compliance. In: Gilbert,   D. T., Fiske, S. T., Lindzey, G. (a cura di), The handbook of social psychology (pp. 151-192). New York, NY, US: McGraw-Hill.

Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Standford, Ca: Standford Univeristy Press.

Guazzini, A., Bagnoli, F. Carletti, T., Vilone, D., Lauro Grotto, R.(2012). Cognitive network structure: an experimental study. Advanced in complex science(ACS), 15, 6, 12500.

Lewin, K. (1943). Psychological ecology. In: Field theory in social science, D. Cartwright (Ed). London: Social Science Paperbacks.

Peysakhovich, A. & Rand, D. G. (2013). Habits of virtue: creating norms of cooperation and defection in the laboratory. Available on: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2294242 .

Peysakhovich, A., Rand, D. G., Kraft-Todd, G.T., Newman, G., Wurzbacher, O., Nowak, M.A., Greene, J.D. (2014). Social heuristics shape intuitive cooperation. Nature communications, 5, 1-12.

Postmes,T., Spears, R., Lea, M. (1998). Breaching or building social boundaries? SIDE-effects of computer-mediated communication. Communication research, 25, 689-715.
Sherif, M. (1935). A study of some social factors in perception: Chapter 2. Archives of Psychology, 187, 17-22.

Introduction

Humans are social animals. Most of our actions are determined by the neighbouring environment, or, better, by what we perceive as our neighbouring environment. So, we act differently if we are aware of being observed with respect to the feeling of loneliness, and clearly this depends on our perception of others. In particular, we are subject to almost unconscious reactions to eyes: it is sufficient a photograph or synthetic eyes on a computer screen to alter one’s behaviour. On the other hand, we tend not to intimately appreciate the possibility of being spied by a camera ocular, even if the “recording” light is on.

We are concerned not only by the possibility of being viewed directly, but also by the possibility that other people can access our documents, especially if they are embarrassing or not socially acceptable. This jealousy for personal items tends to diminish with time.

On the other hand, we are quite curious of knowing personal details of neighbouring individuals, and like to share/comment/discuss them with friends (gossips).

The respect of social norms is clearly affected by the possibility that some misconduct can be directly or indirectly observed. For instance, a fine is much more effective if the infraction is made public.

A final point concerns how our cognitive engagement depends on the group size. It is well known that we switch to different “modalities” if we are involved in a pair discussion, a chat group of 3-5 people, a small group of 5-12 members, or a crowd of more people. We are also able to dominate hierarchic relationship, say a pair discussion while interacting with a small group surrounded by a crowd.

In the virtual world, most of the “automatic” signals that we are accustomed to in real life do not work. We are literally unaware of how many people can view or access to what we feel like “personal” pieces of information on the web. People tend to share personal information on social networks, without considering how much time they can persist and how easily they can be found.

Humans need to understand their social world, as pointed out by scholars of social cognition.

However it is not obvious that in a virtual environment the processes that regulate the actions and the perception of reality are the same as the real world. The processes by which one acquires information, its interpretation and storage, as well as the cognitive performances of the subject are influenced by the environment. To confirm this, researchers from the Social Identity model of de-individuation have shown that despite the condition of anonymity offered by ICT, people tend to rely even more on social norms than the real world.

In order to investigate these topics, we are planning a long-term set of studies, both theoretically and experimentally. In particular, we are going to describe a set of experiments carried out in the fall 2014 by students of the course “applications in social, work and organizations psychology”.

The purpose of the following studies is to investigate how, in a context of virtual interaction and in a short amount of time, the social dynamics become established and which mechanisms are involved.

Procedures, Methods and Sample Description

The 34 participants of the experiment were recruited through voluntary census.

Participants had at their disposal a console with two text windows, one to communicate with others in the experiment in public and another to do it in private. There were also two “radar” interfaces within which were placed the symbols representing the subjects. The first, public and visible from other subjects, allowed the participants to move only their own symbol in order to facilitate communication in the public chat. Indeed, messages were darker the closer was the sender to receiver in the public radar, and vice versa they tended to fade when the sender was farther from the receiver. The second, private and invisible to others, allowed them to move other participants’ symbols, bringing them closer or moving them away from their own symbol fixed at the centre, indicating in this manner the perception of closeness of opinion with others.

In this way it was offered to the participants an equivalent of the non-verbal communications similar to change place so to be closer to a given person (the public radar), and a mnemonic aid for the representation of others’ identities and their perceived social proximity (the private radar).

Guazzini, A., Vilone, D., Bagnoli, F., Carletti, T., & Grotto, R. L. (2012). Cognitive network structure: an experimental study. Advances in Complex Systems, 15(06), 1250084.

In a preliminary stage, the participants were asked to provide anonymously a shortlist of topics perceived as polarizing. Among these were chosen two topics: use of technology (iPhone, iPad) with children (A); adoptions to homosexual couples (B). Participants were then randomly assigned to the four conditions listed below.

1- A – B [F – NF]

2 – B – A [F – NF]

3 – A – B [NF – F]

4 – B – A [NF – F]

In the frustrated game condition (F), lasting 11 minutes, the subjects had to face with others about one of the two polarizing topics, but at the same time they received the instruction to get the greater betweenness to win. In the unfrustrated game condition (NF), of the same duration, participants were directed to discuss freely on the proposed topic.

It is expected that the use of the text windows and radar interfaces could be different in the two conditions. If in the unfrustrated condition subjects can interact, and then use chats and radars, in the most spontaneous manner, in the frustrated condition the use of these will be influenced by a strategic component. For example in order to win, getting the greater betweenness, participants could modulate their way of communicating and relating to others, more than in the unfrustrated condition. It is also expected that the greater openness, strategic or implied that it is, may also affect the perceptions of the other participants and therefore the activity on radars.

The experiments took place in the computer room of the Psychology Faculty of the University of Florence (Italy).

At the end of the session the five factor adjective short test (5-fast) and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory were administered and data about the socio-demographic variables were collected.

Participants in the experiment obtained a STAI test score between 11 and 29 (M = 17.68; SD = 4.8). Regarding the measure of personality traits the sample had the following ratings: Neuroticism (M = 13:22; SD = 3.78), Surgency (M = 15:22; SD = 2.88), Agreebleness (M = 15:55; SD = 3.69), Closeness (M = 9.84; SD = 3.61), Conscientiousness (M = 13:45; SD = 4.83).