Social Dilemmas

In which The Author wonders about trusting
people you deal with online

Social dilemmas are defined as situations where the best interest of the group as a whole conflicts with the best interest of each individual, so that if each looks out only for themselves, all lose.

Bos, N.D., Olson, J.S., Gergle, D., Olson, G.M. & Wright, Z. (2002). ‘Effects of Four Computer-Mediated Communications Channels on Trust Development’ in CHI, 20-25 April 2002

That’s a mouthful by anyone’s standards.

It’s also the title of a research paper. It’s one of four, from which I’m supposed to critically review one for my Psychology in Everyday Life assignment. It’s got to be in by Friday and I honestly don’t know where to start. The other papers deal with cyber-cheating (cybersex, chatroom flirting, and so forth); child suggestibility and witness reliability; and public reactions to terrorist attacks.

As I’ve already read quite a bit about Game Theory, I feel drawn most strongly to the paper on trust. In a perfect world I should give the article on cyber-cheating a stab – if only because it was written by one of our lecturers, Dr Martin Graff. The piece on terrorism was very interesting, but there wasn’t much there to get my teeth into. The report on child suggestibility was dry and full of statistics. So I think it’s going to be the one on trust.

I pretty much made my mind up about that on Saturday, while I was reading the four to try and decide on which one to tackle. The paper is quite stats-heavy, so I’m heading to the library to mug up on ANOVA, Tukey’s test, and linear regression. At least I’m used to dealing with maths in a fairly complex setting, which puts me one step of the rest of my group.

Anyway, yesterday evening I was on Facebook, to see if I could find anyone from my course whom I knew. As usual, a couple of ‘People You May Know’ popped up, so I decided to have a scroll through the suggestions and see if there was anyone I actually did know (for once). Right at the bottom of an array of mugshots was a new photo of a familiar face – Jenny.

Earlier in the day, Carys had been reading my blog, and sent me a text which said ‘Ha ha seen the jenny bit very funny x’. It’s gotta be one of them coincidences. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been thinking about Jenny quite a lot recently.

Every so often I used to log into MSN Messenger and leave the window open, just on the off-chance that she’d spot my name and decide to say ‘hello’. Usually the only people who did come online were Shanara, my cousin Kayleigh, or my niece Mae. Shanara can talk for Bangladesh, and doesn’t stop for breath even when she’s chatting online. On the other hand, Kayleigh and Mae always chat in that really anoyin styl kids hav ov typn onlin, + it defo pises me of afta a bit. Therefore I don’t tend to leave the chat window open for long.

I did email Jenny a couple of weeks ago, after Claire M. had done a bondage-themed Halloween shoot with Mike the photographer. Jenny’s ears pricked up when I mentioned it to her beforehand, and she wondered about coming along on the day – that was before she failed to show up on the last occasion, of course (see ‘Autumn Almanac‘).

Anyway, once Claire and Mike put some of the pictures on Facebook, I just sent Jenny a quick one-liner with the link, and a message that went something like ‘Thought you’d like to see Mike’s Halloween photos – you could have been part of it.’ I didn’t even say ‘Hi Jenny’ or put my name at the end. I didn’t want her to think I was making any friendly overtures. In the event, the social niceties (or lack thereof) didn’t matter, as she didn’t reply.

The mysterious redhead from our psychology group seems to have changed to a different course. I’ve only seen her once since the day we had to write our Lonely Hearts ad (see ‘Fool’s Mate‘), in the bar about a week or so ago. So when Jenny’s face popped up among the usual suspects, I was pleased to see her. My initial response was to leave well alone, of course, but it must have been coincidence that her name had turned up earlier in the day. After a little while I decided to send her a very brief message via Facebook – ‘You look very nice in your new pic, hope you’re okay.’

I didn’t expect a follow-up, of course, but to my amazement she emailed back and we soon started quite a lengthy exchange by email. She told me she’d started Counselling. I asked her, half-seriously, if she was studying it or receiving it. She’s receiving it, apparently – she’s decided that she needs to address her problems and do something positive about changing the situation.

We chatted for a while about odds and ends – university, work, the fact that Borders has gone into administration (an even better reason for getting out of the book trade when I did!) – and I decided it was time to grasp the nettle. I asked her if she fancied meeting for coffee.

I told I knew I was taking a big risk again, and I’m still not convinced that I’m doing the right thing, but she said she’d like to meet up. The fact remains that she’s still the only girl whom I both fancy and like enough to actively pursue, even in the teeth of all the times she’d knocked me back. If there’s a possibility that things might develop between us, I owe it to myself to give her another chance. Otherwise we’ll both spend the rest of the foreseeable future wondering about the parallel universes where it all went right for us.

The upshot of the paper by Bos et al is that the trust game shows significant differences between the four situations in which the game was played: face-to-face; high-quality video conferencing; telephone conferencing; and text only (email). In particular, the text-only environment showed a considerable lack of trust and a lower degree of social bonding between participants. It suggests that non-verbal clues – tone of voice, direction of gaze, facial expressions – play a significant role in building relationships between players of the game. It’s ironic, therefore, that Jenny will open up significantly online, but doesn’t seem to do well around other people.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow night. We’re supposed to be meeting up in the evening and going for something to eat and a couple of beers. That’s my week pretty much mapped out – Social Dilemmas a-go-go. Watch this space …

It’s Beginning to Look a Bit Like Xmas

In which The Author sees an underwhelming
set of festive decorations

Yesterday evening, Father Christmas came to town.

I’d forgotten about it, to be honest. I hadn’t seen any of the posters which Angela T. and Other Danny assured me were all over town. I didn’t experience the thrill of reading the Cynon Valley Leader until last night, so the announcements had passed me by. By five o’clock there was torrential rain, so I decided to stay in the pub anyway. It was far too wet and cold to venture as far as the library, where Father Christmas and his reindeer were due to arrive on the roof at about 7 pm.

The Christmas lights switch-on in Aberdare used to be a big event when I was younger. Even though I was in my late twenties by the time it fizzled out, there was always a real carnival atmosphere. The borough council, the chamber of trade and the local businesses would go all-out to make the whole event a ‘must-see’ for people of all ages.

Father Christmas would appear on the library roof, the lights would be switched on to a massive cheer from the assembled masses, and then the fun began in earnest. The shops and cafes stayed open into the evening; there was an outdoor market outside the Market Hall; a procession of floats and cars would make its way round the town, with Father Christmas at its head; gangs of kids would run around spraying silly string over everything and everyone, while the police watched benevolently from a distance. Just about everyone in the valley, it seemed, would be somewhere in the throng.

When the Community Programme and Employment Training schemes were operating out of Mardy House, the preparations went on for weeks so that their entries would make a huge impact during the procession. I remember being in the crowd one year as the Tower Colliery float came slowly past. It was just after the pit was reopened by its new owners. Riding in triumph like Roman emperors, bathing in the cheers from the crowd, came Tyrone O’Sullivan and his colleagues.

It was a great moment for the valley and its people. I even mentioned it in the opening sequence of the screenplay Gareth L. and I were writing, before Australian Emma came along and it all went sour.

Now, Aberdare is very much the poor relation in the great Rhondda Cynon Taff family, and our Xmas celebrations reflect that fact. In Pontypridd, the town council makes sure that their displays and Father Christmas’s arrival are something worth seeing. Here, the chamber of trade is little more than a talking shop trying its best to see off Tesco and Asda, which are slowly killing the town, not to mention the huge retail and leisure parks in Merthyr, a ten-minute drive over the mountain.

This mouse doesn’t even roar. Apart from the market, you can practically count the number of truly independent retailers in Aberdare on your fingers. The bottom end of the town’s main shopping street, with the exception of a long-established jewellers, a charity shop, Dorothy Perkins and the Co-op Bank, consists of two rows of whitewashed windows. It’s the first place people hit when they get off the train or leave the bus station and follow the signs to the ‘town centre’.

In Cardiff, the event is a huge occasion. Shanara worked late that night, and told me that there were thousands of people in town on a cold wet night to see the switch-on. It’s Cardiff, after all. They have stalls and fairground rides and bands and the traffic stops hours in advance so that people can pour into the city centre from miles around. They’re always able to get a top name to perform the ceremony – Charlotte Church, or some of the Welsh national squad, or John Barrowman, or someone instantly recognisable.

My brother saw the switch-on at first hand. He was outside the pub having a smoke when two council workmen wearing high-visibility jackets came past. They unfastened the panel at the base of a lamp-post, connected a couple of wires so that the lights came on, replaced the panel and moved on to the next one. It wasn’t exactly the sort of gig Dame Shirley Bassey would be crying out for.

I’ll try and take some photos later on and add them to this entry, so that you can see our Winter Wonderland for yourselves.

In the meantime – Bah! Humbug!