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 višegodišnjeg perioda i bez dizanja velike prašine oko toga, njujorške vlasti onemogućile su većinu kontrolne dugmadi koja su nekada upravljala semaforima na pešačkim prelazima tog grada. Zaključili su da kompjuterizovani merači vremena gotovo uvek bolje funkcionišu. Do 2004. godine, manje od 750 od ukupno 3.250 dugmadi takve vrste ostalo je funkcionalno. Međutim, gradska vlast nije uklonila nefunkcionalnu dugmad – navodeći nebrojene prste da ih uzaludno pritiskaju. Prvobitno su dugmad opstala usled cene troškova njihovog uklanjanja, ali se ispostavilo da čak i dugmad koja ne rade imaju određenu svrhu. Pešaci koji pritisnu dugme ređe prelaze ulicu pre pojavljivanja zelenog čovečuljka, navodi Tal Oron-Gilad pri izraelskom Univerzitetu Ben-Gurion u Negevu. Nakon proučavanja ponašanja na pešačkim prelazima, ona zapaža da su ljudi voljniji da se pokore sistemu koji pridaje značaj njihovom doprinosu. Nefunkcionalna dugmad proizvode placebo efekat te vrste zato što se ljudima dopada kada imaju utisak da kontrolišu sistem koji koriste, navodi Ejtan Adar, stručnjak za interakciju čoveka i računara pri Univerzitetu u Mičigenu u gradu En Arbor. Dr Adar ističe da njegovi studenti često projektuju softvere tako da sadrže dugme „save“ (sačuvaj) na koje se može kliknuti, a čija je jedina uloga da ulije sigurnost korisnicima koji nisu svesni da se njihovi pritisci na tastere svejedno automatski čuvaju. Posmatrajte to, rekao je on, kao tračak dobronamerne obmane za suprotstavljanje proračunatoj prirodi sveta mašina. To je jedan pogled na stvar, ali dugmad sa placebo efektom, bar ona koja se nalaze na pešačkim prelazima, mogu imati i mračniju stranu. Ralf Riser, direktor bečkog instituta FACTUM za izučavanje psiholoških faktora kod saobraćajnih sistema, smatra da su svest pešaka o njihovom postojanju i povezana ozlojeđenost izazivana obmanom uzele prevlast nad njihovim prednostima. |