Over the course of many years, without making any great fuss about it, the authorities in New York disabled most of the control buttons that once operated pedestrian-crossing lights in the city. Computerised timers, they had decided, almost always worked better. By 2004, fewer than 750 of 3,250 such buttons remained functional. The city government did not, however, take the disabled buttons away—beckoning countless fingers to futile pressing.
Initially, the buttons survived because of the cost of removing them. But it turned out that even inoperative buttons serve a purpose. Pedestrians who press a button are less likely to cross before the green man appears, says Tal Oron-Gilad of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Israel. Having studied behaviour at crossings, she notes that people more readily obey a system which purports to heed their input.
Inoperative buttons produce placebo effects of this sort because people like an impression of control over systems they are using, says Eytan Adar, an expert on human-computer interaction at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr Adar notes that his students commonly design software with a clickable “save” button that has no role other than to reassure those users who are unaware that their keystrokes are saved automatically anyway. Think of it, he says, as a touch of benevolent deception to counter the inherent coldness of the machine world.
That is one view. But, at road crossings at least, placebo buttons may also have a darker side. Ralf Risser, head of FACTUM, a Viennese institute that studies psychological factors in traffic systems, reckons that pedestrians’ awareness of their existence, and consequent resentment at the deception, now outweighs the benefits. | Tokom mnogih godina, bez dizanja velike buke oko toga, vlast u Njujorku je onemogućila većinu kontrolnih tastera koji su nekada palili svetla za prelaz pešaka po gradu. Oni su odlučili da su kompjuterizovani tajmeri skoro uvek radili bolje. Do 2004, manje od 750 od 3.250 takvih tastera je ostalo u funkciji. Gradska uprava, međutim, nije uklonila onesposobljene tastere – prizivajući bezbrojne prste na uzaludno pritiskanje. U početku, tasteri su opstajali zbog troškova njihovog uklanjanja. Ali ispostavilo se da čak i neoperativni tasteri služe svrsi. Pešaci koji pritisnu taster u manjem broju slučajeva će preći ulicu pre nego što se pojavi „zeleni čika“, kaže Tal Oron-Gilad sa Univerziteta Ben-Gurion u Negevu, Izrael. Nakon proučavanja ponašanja na pešačkim prelazima, ona je primetila da su ljudi spremniji da poštuju sistem koji naizgled obraća pažnju na njihov doprinos. Neoperativni tasteri proizvode placebo efekat takve vrste jer ljudi vole utisak kontrole nad sistemima koje koriste, kaže Ejtan Adar, stručnjak za interakciju ljudi i kompjutera na En Arbor Univerzitetu u Mičigenu. Dr Adar napominje da njegovi studenti dizajniraju softver sa dugmetom „sačuvaj“ koje nema drugu ulogu osim da pruži sigurnost korisnicima koji nisu svesni da se njihovi pritisci po tastaturi automatski čuvaju. Mislite o tome, kaže on, kao o dobronamernoj obmani kojom se potire urođena hladnoća sveta mašina. Ovo je jedno viđenje. Ali, barem na pešačkim prelazima, placebo tasteri mogu imati i mračniju stranu. Ralf Riser, šef bečkog FACTUM instituta koji proučava psihološke faktore u saobraćajnim sistemima, smatra da svest pešaka da tasteri postoje i posledična ozlojeđenost zbog prevare, sada prevazilazi dobrobiti. |