Paper associated to the presentation at the:
The 5th International Doctoral Consortium on Intellectual Capital Management
May 30, 2012
Organised by
The European Chair On Intellectual Capital Management
Faculté Jean Monnet, University Paris-Sud,
54 Bd Desgranges , 92330 Sceaux
Note:
As of now, the proposed experimentations are just suggested ideas.
Connector Corner: Extending LLM automation use cases with UiPath GenAI connec...
2012.03 social neuroscience for investigating social interaction in entreprise social systems-extended abstract-v2
1. Using Social Neuroscience for investigating online social
interaction and collaboration in the network organization
(Social neuroscience informing the design of Enterprise
online social and collaborative systems)
Thierry Nabeth
Key words: social brain, social neuroscience, social neurocognition, behavioural neuroscience, social
signal, enterprise social networking, collaboration, social media, organizational design, online
identity, online motivation.
Abstract
The application of neuroscience for the study of the social process has emerged as a promising field of
investigation (Cacioppo & Decety 2011, Adolphs 2009). In this paper we examine how this method
can more specifically be applied for investigating social interaction and collaboration that is mediated
by the new social systems (such as social networking, microbloging, wikis) that have appeared as part
of the web 2.0. In particular this paper explores how these methods can help us on developing our
understanding of social interaction and collaboration in an online enterprise context more specifically
in determining: (1) to which extend the human brain is able to accommodate the new online tools; and
(2) how the social process and the new modalities of interaction in an online enterprise context
function and are handled by the human brain.
To do so, we first identify what are the different mechanisms and constituents of interaction happening
online and offline and how they differ (for instance understanding the functioning of non verbal
communication online). Then we suggest different neuroscience approach that can potentially be used
to get an understanding of the functioning of the online social process (such as observing social
perception, motivation, the orientation of social attention, or the structural evolution of the brain) and
to check the reality of some transformation of the brain (and the emergence of the "Homo
cyberneticus") induced by the use of these tools.
We then propose to apply the neuroscience method to explore two areas: (1) online identity in social
systems: How online identity is managed by the human brain in online social systems (e.g. forming of
impression, trust, etc.) ; (2) online motivation: Understanding the different elements intervening in
people engagement in online social systems (cf. the reward system & online interaction).
Introduction and background
Sociality represents a profound part of human nature (cf. "Man is a social animal" by the philosopher
Spinoza): people actions are not only driven by "cold" calculation but are also the result of more
irrational social or emotional components (Akerlof & Shiller 2009) that have their root directly in the
circuitry of the human brain. Human action is therefore often driven by social elements (Walter et al.
2005) such as conformance, attitude, powers and territories, or altruism, rather than only the
maximization of an optimisation function (Homo sapiens is probably more of a "Homo sociologicus"
than of an "Homo economicus"). For managing this social process, the brain relies on a variety of
specialised and mostly unconscious mechanisms that are activated for assisting human beings in
"decoding" the social signals (Vinciarelliet et al 2012; Pentland 2010; Insel & Fernald 2004) and
orienting their decisions (Kahneman 2011). Hence different mechanisms such as impression
management (for assessing trust), labelling & attribution (i.e. stereotyping) or presence and attention
mechanisms (for identifying pertinent information) are largely used to assist people in managing their
social interactions with others without mobilising too much of conscious cognitive effort.
The advent of an information age and of the network organization in which people are more likely to
participate in distributed teams and communities has not changed the condition of the human nature
1
2. but has radically transformed the form in which the interaction takes place. People interaction is now
often mediated by technology, and an important part of social interaction and collaboration happens
via the use of the online social systems (social networking systems, microblogging, wikis, instant
messaging) that have been massively adopted. (note: it should be fair to say that the corporate world
still shows some sign of reluctance in fully integrating the usage of these tools and in teamworking
online, but this is one of the reason making investigation of the subject so meaningful). An important
question that has arise is how the human "social brain", that has been "elaborated" by the evolution
selection process in the context of "real life" interaction, is able to accommodate to these new "virtual"
modalities of interaction that are mediated by the technology. For instance, to which extend are these
new modalities able to support effectively nonverbal communication that represent an important
component in human communication? Another question is about determining how the different social
elements (such as conformance, territory, power, etc.) and mechanisms (such as perception, labelling,
or attention) are being dealt with by human beings in an online world.
Amongst the different methods that are available (social science methods, the new "computational
social sciences" methods, agent-based modelling etc.), neuroscience represents a very promising
means to investigate social process and collaboration online, in particular in the perspective of a socio-
cognitive model of social interaction. Neuroscience method is indeed providing us with the possibility
to "sneak" into what is happening in the people head, and to observe phenomenon that are largely
invisible. In this paper we explores how neuroscience methods can help us on developing our
understanding of social interaction and collaboration in an online enterprise context more specifically:
(1) in determining to which extend the human brain is able to accommodate the new online tools; For
instance perception happening online takes a different form which may have some significant
implication in the effectiveness of nonverbal communication (which interaction "in real life"
represents an important component of human communication); (2) and to analyse and understand the
social process and the modalities of interaction happening in online social systems, notably in the
context of the enterprise. For instance many social processes such as the construction of identity,
people expression, the formation of trust, the perception of power and territory, or influence, take a
different form online. They are also supported by different mechanisms in the "social web" such as the
definition of online profiles, online conversations (in forum, in blogs, or in microblogging), opinion
systems, activity streams, and other social translucence mechanisms.
For our exploration, we first identify what are the different mechanisms and constituents of online
interaction and try to put it in perspective to what exists in "real life". For instance we try to see if
some equivalent of nonverbal communication can be conducted online (examples include the use of
like button in social systems, or of the capture and the display of activity streams), or how people
express their identity online (via their profile or the display of exposure of their actions) in a way that
follows similar patterns to what happens offline (see the work of the anthropologist Goffman (1959)
for a theory for the presentation of identity). We may also identify different categories of populations
(e.g. psychological profile or age) and patterns of usage (networkers, curators, etc.).
Then we suggest different neuroscience approaches that can potentially be used to get a better
understanding of the functioning of the online social process (i.e. perception, reasoning and action in
an online social setting) and what are the different part of the brain that are involved. Examples may
include the use of neuroscience methods (fMRI, eye-tracking, observation of physiological effects
such as dilation of the pupil, assessment of salivary hormones (Schultheiss & Stanton 2009) such as
oxytocin (Barraza & Zak 2009)) for assessing people emotion, trust (Zak 2008), level of attention,
arousal, during the use of online social system. Other research may consist in using imaging
techniques for looking what are the different areas of the brain activated during an interaction (e.g.
amygdala, prefrontal cortex, etc.) so as to determine if online social interaction relies on high level
(deliberative) or lower level (emotion) functions of the brain or to measure the effect of repeated
exposure of human faces (on the formation of trust). Other imaging techniques may represent a means
for studying the structure of the brain and its evolution (given brain plasticity) in different categories
of populations. For instance it may be used for mapping in the brain the different functions that are
involved in an online social interaction (i.e. some correlation have been found between amygdala
volume and social network size in Humans (Bickart et al. 2011), and specialized social attention
circuits have been identified).
2
3. More specifically we propose to apply the neuroscience method to explore two areas: (1) online
identity in social systems: How online identity is managed by the human brain in online social systems
(e.g. forming of impression, trust, nonverbal communication, etc.); (2) online motivation:
Understanding the different elements intervening in people engagement in online social systems (i.e.
why people participate in an online social interaction).
We expect that such investigation will contribute to develop a better understanding of the social
process and work in the network organization (and help to explain its disfunctioning) but also bringing
some insight to the debate on the reality of transformation of the human species into a "Homo
cyberneticus" (cf. the question of the existence of the Y generation) and the arrival of new "breed" of
employees.
Method
This investigation will make use of neuroscience methods, and more specifically it will be based on
the measure of human behaviour via the recording of brain activities (e.g. EGG scanning, fMRI),
psychophysiological measures (e.g. assessment of salivary hormones, pupil dilatation) or the
observation of behaviours (e.g. via eye tracking).
More concretely, this research will start by selecting a set of hypotheses that are representative for
assessing (1) the ability for the human to manage the interaction in a online social context, and (2)
understanding how the online social interaction process is handled in the human brain. Experiments
will be conducted aiming at collecting factual data that can be used for testing the validity of these
hypotheses. Based on these data, an analysis will then be done, validating or invalidating these
hypothesis, and reflecting about the generalizability of the findings to the more general context of
online social interaction for the enterprise.
Theoretical model?
Examples of previous relevant research
There exists a significant quantity of researches in many disciplines (economics, decision making,
marketing, etc.) being conducted today that are using neuroscience method. A much smaller number of
this research is concerned with the study of collaboration and social interaction in the enterprise, more
specifically on an online context (i.e. using online social systems). This section aims at briefly
presenting some of the relevant research (in relation to online social interaction) that have been
conducted so far.
Gary Small and colleagues have explored how the time spend on the internet is changing the very
structure of their brain (Small, Moody, Siddarth & Bookheimer 2009). Practically they have used
functional MRI scanning to observe the difference in activation patterns when performing novel
Internet search between groups of 24 subjects having a minimal or a significant Internet search engine
experience. They observed that the "Net Savvy group" demonstrated significant increases in signal
intensity in additional regions of the brain such as in the ones controlling of decision making or
complex reasoning. They concluded that experience in search may alter the brain’s responsiveness in
some of the brain neural circuits.
The neuroeconomist Paul Zak has explored the influence of online social related activities on people
hormonal level, and therefore on arousal or on mood. To do this he has measured the level of
hormones such as oxytocin (associated to generosity and trust), cortisol and ACTH (associated to
biological stress) of people twitting (Penenberg 2010). The blood analysis shown an example in which
10 minutes after the starting of twitting, oxytocin levels spiked more than 10 %, and the stress
hormones went down to more between 10% and 15%.
Maurizio et al. (2011) have studies the affective experience evoked by SNSs. Specifically, they have
recorded skin conductance, blood volume pulse, electroencephalogram, electromyography, respiratory
activity, and pupil dilation of a group of subjects (30 students) "exposed" to their personal Facebook
3
4. account and to other contexts (relaxation and stressful conditions) for a comparison. They found via
the analysis of the psychophysiological data and pupil dilation that the Facebook experience was
significantly different from the other stress and relaxation contexts. They suggest that SNS may
represent a specific positive affective state.
Kevin Wise and others measured emotional responses of a group of participants (29 participants)
browsing Facebook using of a set of body sensors (i.e. skin-conductance) and facial electromyogram
(EMG) (Wise, Alhabash and Park. 2010). They investigated the difference between passive social
browsing (i.e., newsfeeds) and extractive social searching (i.e., friends’ profiles). They found that
social searching (browsing profiles) was more pleasant and more used than social browsing (browsing
information).
Kuzmanovic et al. (2012) used neuroscience methods to investigate the neural basis of first impression
and more specifically the difference in the processing of verbal and nonverbal social information. 18
participants were exposed to verbal stimuli (i.e. sentences) and nonverbal stimuli (3 second video
clips) of other persons and their reaction was recorded using fMRI and analysed (using MATLAB).
They found that the processing of nonverbal information was more strongly associated with affective
processing (cf. amygdala) whereas verbal information was associated with 'more deliberate' social
inferential processing (precuneus and posterior cingulate cortex).
Finally (for this document), Phan et al. (2011) have explored the functioning of reciprocation in an
interaction. They have measured using fMRI the brain responses of 36 subjects engaged in a repeated
trust game experiment (participants played the role of an investor who must decide whether to invest
20 monetary units). They have observed a signal of reciprocity in the ventral striatum in response to
partners who have consistently returned the investment.
Research to be conducted
The variety of investigation to be conducted in online social interaction using neuroscience appears to
be potentially very large, first because some of them may simply consist in revisiting previous
research in the domain of organizational behaviour with a neuroscience approach.
Surprisingly little work seems to have been conducted yet in using neuroscience methods for
investigating collaboration and social interaction in the enterprise. Beyond ethical or legal reasons, this
may be due to the difficulty to conduce experiments in the context of the enterprise: The availability of
the subjects that would take part of such an experiments may be difficult (this category of population
is busy), may require the testing in an "in-vivo" situation difficult to set-up (complex social dynamic
happens in the enterprise), and the cognitive processes to be investigated in an enterprise context may
be complicated to measure.
In the case of "online interaction", the difficulty for testing in an "in-vivo" situation may however be
easier to overcome (the working environment does not need to be in the office) and the "recruitment"
of participants should be less difficult among a population that is used to work part of their time at
home (but this should however be confirmed).
The cognitive online social processes candidate for an investigation of the social online process in the
entreprise include the following topics: impression and trust (e.g. how people online identity is
perceived by the brain, first and lasting impression, emotion, nonverbal communication, etc.);
motivation and desire to interact (altruism and intrinsic motivation, addiction, feeling good);
psychosociological processes (e.g. how social pressure functions online, how people "reciprocate"
online, how territory and power works); social attention (e.g. how people manage their attention online
such as prioritizing the different solicitations); imitation (e.g. is there some situation in which mirror
neurons are activated in online interaction); etc. (conflict, anger, cognitive biase, etc.)
In these different case research may look about the mechanisms in the social systems that are used to
support these processes (e.g. social translucence mechanisms), and what are the different circuits of
the brain that are activated during the interaction (e.g. the more emotional circuits such as amygdala or
the more deliberative ones such as the prefrontal cortex, as well as the reward system). Exploration
may also be conducted on the category of population (e.g. age, gender, social category).
4
5. The following subsection presents concrete examples of experiments that are considered for an
investigation.
1) Experiment 1: Online identity perception (impression, trust).
Background:
An important function of social systems is the existence on an online identity, i.e. how the different
participants are perceived. This identity can be expressed by its owner via his/her profile, which
contains description, photography, etc. This identity is also expressed by the owner activities (and
available via his activity feeds) but also by others (for instance expressing the popularity of the
person).
For instance identity is an critical ingredient in the social process, since it is used in the formation of
trust which play an important role in the establishment and the development of a relationship. Identity
may also represent a significant element in people desire to engage and pursuit a relationship.
Objective:
The objective of this first experiment is to investigate using neuroscience method how people identity
is perceived online, and its implication on trust (first impression, lasting impression), habituation
(reduction of perceived social distance), leadership, etc. For instance we will be interested to
understand what are the circuit of the brain (emotional or deliberative) involved in the formation on an
impression online, and for instance how the brain is processing nonverbal communication (i.e.
information which aim is not aimed at directly conveying content such as a conversation).
Experiment:
Observe a group of subjects in different online social contexts (e.g. internal social networking, internal
community, public social network site or wiki) that are asked to access identity information (people
profiles, activity stream, interactions with others, popularity) of a group of users (that they know or do
not known). Measures are to be conducted on the different mechanisms that are activated when people
acquire identity information.
This experiment may also investigate the influence of repeated exposure of human faces in social
systems (continuing the work of Kapoor, Konstan & Terveen (2005)), how online habituation works
(further developing the work of Breiter et al. (2009)) and how the different components of identity
(e.g. emotion, social status) can be effectively transmitted in online systems.
2) Experiment 2: Motivation (testing the reward system in online
interaction).
Background:
A very important aspect in collaboration and social exchange in a serious context is related to the
willingness of people to participate. The relative failure of traditional knowledge management system
can indeed probably due to the difficulty to engage people participation. An observation of the recent
practice in social media at large and phenomenon (such as what can be observe on Facebook with
narcissisms or addiction) seems to indicate that the nature of the experience to be totally different than
in the past, and that participation may be driven by more intrinsic motives than by more extrinsic
reasons (conformance to orders, incentives).
Objective:
The objective of this second line of experiment is to investigate the motivational aspects that are
involved in people adopting online social systems.
5
6. Experiment:
Observe a group of subjects in different online social contexts, the different elements contributing to
their motivation, and in particular look at how the brain reward system is activated (e.g. social
interaction, fulfilment, etc.) when conducting an online social activities. This experiment may look at
the different effects such as instant satisfaction (feeling good), delayed satisfaction, extraversion (e.g.
egotism and narcissism), self-efficacy, of desire for social bonding (or fear of rejection).
3) Other experiments (attention, influence, etc.).
A variety of other experiments could be conducted to further explore the mechanisms involved in a
online social interaction. Topics to investigate may include online social attention (e.g. how the brain
deals with social interaction, and in particular filter and process the information or multitask),
collaboration and interaction dynamics (e.g. obligation to reciprocate), social decision making (e.g.
group creativity ), etc.
Finally other experiments may be conducted to observe the difference in the brain circuits of people
having a different social networking activities, so as to investigate the importance of brain plasticity
when using these systems.
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