Make friends online: where technology and evolution meet

When looking for a good friend, you might think that the more friends you can choose, the better. But the development of technology that is primarily internet has made that perception change.

The Internet gives us a lot of unprecedented choices in human history when we want anything from a bike to a friend. Although we may think that many options are good, a new study proves that we will be more satisfied if there are fewer choices . However, we may not yet be fully equipped to correct the wrong view.

Throughout human history, we have quite a few options to choose friends, so we are happy to welcome any additional options if it appears. For example, when our neocortex develops, part of our social network is processed - the average human social group has about 150 individuals. Healthy members in the opposite sex reproductive age group have about 35 people - the standard of the internet.

Since we have developed such a social environment, we tend to want to have more choices. That's why people are often dating dating sites tempting with millions of chances of success. But a group of researchers has demonstrated in a recent survey that many options may not help people choose better things than when only half of those options are available. University of Edinburgh psychologist Alison Lenton, Barbara Fasolo of the London School of Political and Economic Sciences, and cognitive scientist Peter Todd of Indiana University have just presented their findings on the topic. This is on the latest issue of IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication.

According to the researchers, people tend to anticipate that they will be more comfortable going 'buy you' when there are many choices in their hands. However, in fact, people have similar satisfaction when there are few choices . Scientists have conducted two experiments to prove the similarity between experience and speculation.

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In the first experiment, the researchers asked 88 participants with an average age of 23 that the amount you would ideally choose for them was, the choice set between 1 and 5000. People participate in considering each group of friends, from very small to very large, on 4 criteria: predictable difficulty of making choice decisions, predictive satisfaction with decisions, anticipated regrets when making decisions and anticipated interests in the selection process.

Basically, participants predict that they will achieve the highest satisfaction status when choosing between 20 and 50 people. Therefore, in the second experiment, the researchers looked at participants' satisfaction when choosing friends in about 20 to 50 people compared to less select groups. Interestingly, they found that participants chose from a group of 20 people who had a similar experience with members who had to make decisions with a group of only 4 people. In the same way, participants' real feelings when choosing groups with 4 options are even better than previously anticipated.

According to the researchers ' summary, 'prioritizing large size selection groups with the desire to have more enjoyment, satisfaction and less regret has not come true'. In fact, there is considerable disproportion between what people think they will feel as well as what they really feel .

Misjudgment of the optimal number of options is also observed in a number of situations other than finding you. In general, the biggest disadvantage when there are more options including the state that gets frustrated when the selection process is too complicated, some people don't even make the final decision, they experience the feeling. Less satisfaction while more regret after deciding. If you face millions of opportunities, you will have a lower probability of choosing the right opportunity than choosing between 4 options.

The study also provides evidence that people often do not pay much attention to all the information the plan has available when they have too many options to consider and select. Therefore they are likely to miss an interesting friend in this situation.

The PhysOrg reply, Fasolo said: 'The information overwhelms the results very often for customer researchers from the 70s. But the context is always the customer - a little bit more fake and new. in the sense of evolution. It is not always obvious when similar results occur in the natural context of choosing friends. This is true. We are considering a world of modern friends - not the constant encounters in the forest but the simultaneous meetings with the intensity when the man peeks his eyes from the coffee table. another table. In that world, we are not very familiar with animals. Therefore, in short, I think the idea that greater diversity will have the opposite effect in the context of choosing you is not obvious. '

Previous researchers have attempted to explain our misperception of the number of alternatives in terms of evolution. By the time our brain evolves to solve the problem of making choices, people rarely have too many options to consider. Therefore, we do not adapt to considering too many options like today. The Internet has no natural limit on space that makes us encounter a problem that never existed in the world of our ancestors. Researchers point out that about 1% of the 600 million people have access to online friend sites.

After millions of years of searching for greater diversity under many conditions, where capital diversity has been relatively limited, convincing people that more is not always better becomes very difficult. One reason is that people may not have a basis to compare with the benefits that are chosen with less options. Awareness about disadvantages will always appear later.

Besides, even if we have learned the lessons for ourselves, that doesn't make much sense. Researchers have demonstrated that human desires, not previous real experiences, play a more important role in deciding whether they participate in the same selection as before in the future. hybrid or not.

As for the results, researchers believe that web designers of online search sites should consider this contrasting relationship and try to alleviate the desire of people with multiple choices. while minimizing large groups of options. Currently, some websites do the opposite: when one search results in fewer (or more) 50 people, the site encourages visitors to expand the search criteria. In fact, researchers encourage web developers to keep in mind that they must balance users' desire to have multiple choices with the fact that providing multiple choices will force them to evaluate Potential candidates superficially.

Fasolo said: 'I find it interesting but also a little worried that underestimating the cost of many options makes us find things that are offensive, not just online friends. but the experts of the friend sites. If we want people to make reasonable choices, researchers need to make web designers make friends to create simpler, more manageable websites. '

Additional information: Lenton, Alison P .; Fasolo, Barbara; and Todd, Peter M. '' Shopping 'for a Mate: Expected versus Experienced Preferences in Online Mate Choice' (Make friends online: predictive emotions and feelings of experience when choosing online). IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Vol. 51, Number 2, June 2008.