2/09/2023: Mina Cikara

[GabeNicholson]

Comment below with a well-developed question or comment about the reading for this week's workshop.

If you would really like to ask your question in person, please place two exclamation points before your question to signal that you really want to ask it.

Please post your question by Tuesday of the coming week at 11:59 PM. We will also ask you all to upvote questions that you think were particularly good. There may be prizes for top question-askers.

[mintaow]

Hi Professor Cikara,

Thanks for sharing this thought-provoking research! I am very curious about your perspectives on the mechanism of integrating information about relationships between agents. And how does the computational model of latent structure learning differ from other existing models in understanding social group boundaries? Looking forward to the presentation tomorrow!

[WonjeYun]

Dear professor Cikara.

Thank you for sharing your research ideas with us. While reading your work, I was wondering if you have conducted research based not only on political issues, but also with opinions that is thought to have leaning effects? I hope comparing the experiment results between various issues could have provided more information about the latent structure of social groups.

[erweinstein]

Hi Professor Cikara,

As you note, "disidentification—self-categorization into one group largely in opposition to the alternative group" has been observed by previous studies, but it appears to be an increasingly relevant concept for understanding the psychology and sociology of political decision-making. I would be very interested in seeing future work, following your methods, that uses more "realistic" (for lack of a better word) ways of representing controversial political and values differences. I don't have a polisci background, but I've used ISideWith a lot (across multiple cycles of US presidential and "midterm" elections) and I find that the way it represents issues feels very stilted and unnatural. To pick one of the top-voted recent questions: 'Should “gender identity” be added to anti-discrimination laws?'; I think most people are intuiting that this is a political question about LGBT+ acceptance, and they're just picking the answer that fits "their team" ("Red" vs. "Blue"), while a more nuanced question that illustrated a scenario--rather than used terms without defining them--might yield more interesting answers.

[beilrz]

hello Professor Cikara, thank you for sharing the research. Do you think the design of electoral tickets and candidate debates will affect voters' choices, based on the finding of your research? for example, if the intention is to push voter toward a liberal candidate, is including more conservative candidates on the debate a strategy?

[cgyhumble0612]

Thank you so much Professor! I'd like to know if there is a channel to broaden this research to the fields of nation, race or culture? For example, is the finding also applicable to national recognition? Look forward to your sharing tomorrow!

[Emily-fyeh]

Hi Prof. Cikara, Thank you for sharing your work with us. I am curious about the learning process within latent groups--how do endogenous and exogenous factors interact with each other? Since political opinion and electoral behavior are measurable, do you perceive your work can be used for dynamic prediction?

[lbitsiko]

Dear Prof. Cikara,

I found your research on social groups really interesting, particularly, the concept of social categorization as dynamic and flexible.

One thought I had while reading the initial part of the experiments regards the dismissal of previous research on movie preferences. Movie preferences could possibly reveal values/opinions/beliefs, as brilliantly (and vulgarly) highlighted by John Cusack in the movie “High Fidelity”: “What really matters is what you like, not what you are like… Books, records, films – these things matter. Call me shallow but it’s the f****n truth.” You also mention as a limitation of the research that “the source of promiscuous generalization from preferences to traits is unclear”. Could you expand on possible experiments testing such dimensions? Looking forward to your talk.

Kind regards, Loizos

[ChongyuFang]

Hi Prof. Cikara, thanks for sharing your work with us! I wonder how the literature of coalition in economics and relate to the field of your study?

[BaotongZh]

Dear Prof. Cikara,

Thank you for sharing your work. I was just wondering if there is evidence of disidentification-driven bias in social evaluation and choice according to the model of latent structure learning.

[yunshu3112]

Hi Professor Cikara,

I am very impressed by your work. I wonder if you have examined the potential cognitive framework behind latent structure learning. Do you think the psychology theories about social learning or how people update beliefs can help us better understand this issue? What do you think is more crucial, to predict people's decisions more accurately, or to understand the mechanism of people's decision-making process more thoroughly? Thank you!

[YutaoHeOVO]

Hi Professor Cikara,

Thank you so much for sharing your work. There is a concern on the idea of latent structure learning. The Amazon Mechanic Turks is generally criticized for its potential low quality in experiment participation. Especially when we conduct the research on behavior, this problem becomes likely to happen. And if the participants just play around (even though they pass the questions and this can make them not excluded), then this might serve as a confounder for the latent learning structure. Could you let us know how such to tell the difference between such effect and other latent learning or even coalition effect? Again, thank you so much for sharing this idea.

Best, Yutao

[nijingwen]

Thank you Professor Cikara for sharing your work! I have learned something about probabilistic model in my undergraduate school. looking forward to hearing from you

[HongzhangXie]

Dear Professor Cikara,

Thank you so much for sharing your work. I am interested in latent group structure experiments. The experiment has four "individuals": "You", A, B, and C. The participant("You") can choose A or B(and C). This choice can be regarded as a choice between a group or not a group (BC or A) or regarded as a choice between a bigger group or a smaller group(BC+"you" or A+"you"). How do we think about "group" in experiments?

[koichionogi]

Dear Professor Cikara, Thank you so much for sharing your work. I have a question about the setting of this research. I was wondering if you have done any research on latent structure learning with controlling one of the members' behavior. I think one individual's behavior would impact others, and the impacted others' changes in their behaviors would influence someone else. I am curious if. there is any research that examines the impact of change in an individual behavior on the entire community to that she or he belongs. Thank you again for your research presentation.

[lguo7]

Hi Professor Cikara, Thank you for sharing! After reading your research, I am very interested in potential structure learning. Also, I have a question: What do you think about the fact that there are multiple potential groups in a person's society, and these potential groups may overlap or "conflict"? How would you deal with this situation?

[helyap]

Hi Professor,

Thank you for sharing your work with us. I’m curious how this intersects with theories of homophily and heuristics especially given the nature of the AMT churning environment. If the respondents were forced to take more time in their decision making, would results change?

[zbchen0129]

Hi Professor Cikara, Thank you for sharing your work! Discovering social groups via latent structure learning is an interesting topic. I am curious about whether the method you used in this research can be applied to other fields since the data from crime is special in the world. Besides, could you elaborate more about practical significance and relevance of this study? Thanks!

[QichangZheng]

I appreciate you sharing your effort, Professor Cikara! The idea of group formation interests me. It functions as a "perpetual veil" (Campbell 1981) in American politics, hiding people's judgment when it comes to doing political activities and voting along party lines. I'd be interested to see whether you've linked your work to any pieces that address voting, campaigning, or elections.

[Peihan12]

I appreciate you sharing this paper. You provided a fairly intriguing technique of social group borders based on latent structure learning, which I found quite intriguing. I'm right to wonder about the mechanism. Could you specifically demonstrate how the proposed mechanism might be connected to social relation theories other than the balancing theory? In order to better appreciate the societal ramifications of knowing the mechanism, could you also give some examples? Thanks!

[mdvadillo]

Hi Professor Ciara, thank you for your presentation, I found this paper very interesting, and I was wondering if you could give your ideas for why people would show promiscuous generalization?

[xinyi030]

Dear Prof. Cikara,

Thanks for sharing your work with us! The following are my two questions.

(1) How do individual differences in cognitive and social processing affect the ability to learn and represent social group boundaries? For example, are there certain personality traits or cognitive styles that make individuals more or less likely to use latent structure learning to infer social groups? (2)The study focuses on learning about social group boundaries in the context of political values. I wonder if the results are generalizable to other types of social groups, such as those based on race, gender, or occupation. How might the mechanisms of latent structure learning differ across different types of social groups?

Thanks!