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 godina, bez da su pravile veliku buku oko toga, vlasti u Nujorku su onemogućile većinu kontrolnih dugmića koja su nekada upravljala svetlima na pešačkom prelazu u gradu. Odlučile su da kompjuterizovani merači vremena gotovo uvek bolje funkcionišu. Do 2004, manje od 750 od 3.250 takvih dugmića ostalo je u funkciji. Medjutim, gradske vlasti nisu otklonile isključene dugmiće - pozivajući bezbrojne prste da uzalud pritiskaju. U početku, dugmići su opstali jer njihovo otklanjanje puno košta. Ali ispostavilo se da čak nefunkcionalni dugmići služe svrsi. Manja je verovatnoća da će pešaci koji pritisnu dugme preći ulicu pre nego što se pojavi zeleno, kaže Tal Oron-Gilad sa Univerziteta Ben-Gurion iz Negeva, u Izraelu. Nakon što je proučila ponašanje na pešačkom prelazu, ona beleži da su ljudi spremniji da poštuju sistem koji će podržati njihov input. Nefunkcionalni dugmići izazivaju placebo efekat ove vrste jer se ljudima dopada utisak da imaju kontrolu nad sistemom koji koriste, kaže Ejtan Adar, ekspert za interakciju izmedju kompjutera i ljudi sa Univerziteta Mičigen, Ani Arbor. Dr. Adar zapaža da njegovi studenti obično prave softver na kome može da se klikne na dugme ''sačuvaj'' koje nema nikakvu drugu ulogu nego da umiri one korisnike koji nisu svesni da se njihovi pritisci svakako automatski pamte. Mislite o tome, kaže on, kao o dobronamernoj prevari nasuprot hladnoći svojstvenoj svetu mašina. To je jedna tačka gledišta. Ali placebo dugmići mogu imati i mračnu stranu, barem na pešačkom prelazu. Ralf Riser, šef FAKTUM-a, bečkog instituta koji proučava psihološke faktore u sistemu saobraćaja, smatra da svest pešaka o njihovom postojanju, i sledstvena ljutnja usled prevare, sada premašuje koristi. |