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Babies' random choices become their preferences
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoI don't understand from the article how they knew the baby's initial choice was random. What if the baby originally selected that toy because they preferred it? They could be drawn to the toy's color, or shape, or any number of other things.
- AlanYx 6y agoI wonder if there's an aspect of the experimental design that's left out of the linked article. For example, could the toys have been hidden behind some sort of shield, so that the baby couldn't see what color they were picking until they got to the shield? Otherwise, there doesn't seem to be any basis for concluding that the initial choice was random.
- User23 6y agoIndividual adult humans are terrible at producing randomness. Why would babies be any different?
- teraflop 6y agoThe actual paper (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797620954491 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679762095449...) does mention this, even though the press release doesn't: > Specifically, we found that after selecting from two equally attractive objects, infants subsequently devalued the initially unchosen object. We ruled out the possibility that this reflects a desire for novelty or any intrinsic preference among the options. The experimental design that allowed them to do this is simple, but pretty clever. The original version of the experiment is based on first letting the baby choose between toys A and B, and then demonstrating that if A was chosen, the baby prefers a new toy C over B. (All of the toys were equally likely to be preferred by a control group.) Since it's not possible to know whether the initial choice was random or based on individual preference, they did a modified version of this experiment. After the baby is shown the first two toys, they are placed under boxes and secretly swapped. Despite originally having chosen B, the baby instead gets to interact with A. In this case, the babies still fairly consistently choose C (the new toy) over B (the one they originally preferred but didn't get to interact with). And as the press release does mention, simply giving a baby a toy randomly chosen by the experimenter doesn't cause the same effect. So the reasonable inference is that the actual experience of making a choice (or at least having the illusion of doing so) reduces one's attachment to the option that wasn't chosen.
- AlanYx 6y agoThe actual paper is behind a paywall for me. I'm having trouble understanding your description of the experiment. How does selecting C over B, after initially preferring B, support the thesis that random choices become preferences? Shouldn't the baby select B over C to support that thesis?
- dllthomas 6y agoIIUC... The idea is that the baby selected the box they believed contained B, but it actually contained A. Apparently the baby concluded that since they had opened the box that they chose, they must have chosen the toy inside, and they now like A better and B worse.
- dllthomas 6y agoIf the secret swapping wasn't as secret as the experimenters thought, these results seem consistent with the babies having a stable, random preference order among the blocks. Otherwise, it does seem like they've demonstrated (something like?) choice induced preference change in babies, and it's additionally interesting that it can be tricked that way.
- gowld 6y agoNo, because the boxes were swapped after the initial preference selection.
- dllthomas 6y agoI don't understand.
- WalterSear 6y agoWhichever the baby chose, that became A, the other became B.
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- eperfa 6y ago"In follow-up experiments, when the researchers instead chose which toy the baby would play with, the phenomenon disappeared entirely. If you take the element of choice away, Feigenson said, the phenomenon goes away." (from the article)
- PaulHoule 6y agoI think it's pretty obvious if you raise a child.
- frankydp 6y agoAlso obvious is that even truly random selections would be repeated because we are creatures of habit/pattern. Not sure what is novel in this study other than it confirms a pretty expected outcome.
- blackbrokkoli 6y agoResearch confirming "what grandma always knew" is still very valuable research.
- suby 6y agoJust some random speculation, but how do we know the choices are random? Moreover, I think there's an element of competence being enjoyable. If I start to learn a hobby and experience little successes along the path to competence, that will reinforce it as something that I want to do. Eventually you'll get good at it, or at least for very young children better at it than anything else you can do, and again, competence is enjoyable. There's also possibly an element of a sunken cost fallacy. You've spent x amount of time or resources on some thing, so you start to justify to yourself why it's worthwhile to pursue or to have done.
- karmakaze 6y agos/babies'/people's/
- lkbm 6y agoProbably, but it's smart to be specific with what you've actually measured/observed. This study is specifically observing babies, and if we want to assert that this is true of all people, we should do experiments that include non-babies.
- tomalpha 6y agoOther's have already questioned the randomness of the original choice, however whether random or not, there is some logic in continuing to do something that had a good outcome. Even if it's just that the particular soft toy didn't eat me, explode, or cause Mommy to be cross at me.
- SomewhatLikely 6y agoRight, it's a kind of bandit problem where you need to choose between exploration and exploitation. Continuing to use the toy that's working is not a bad solution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit
- dragonwriter 6y ago> They set each block far apart, so the babies had to crawl to one or the other—a random choice. That’s...not what “random” means. That is, if anything, a factor that makes the choice less likely to be random. The greater commitment of resources that needs to be made, intuitively, the less likely the decision is to be made randomly. That they are “equally bright and colorful” (even if that is objectively true) doesn't mean that there is no basis for preference, just that how bright and colorful they are isn't the basis.
- teraflop 6y agoThis might go without saying, but please don't assume too much about whether the research makes sense based on this article. University press releases about research publications are almost always terrible and inaccurate. As I summarized in another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24801879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24801879), the researchers showed fairly convincingly that choice-induced preference change can cause an effect that is opposite to what you would expect if the original choice was based on individual preference.
- wjnc 6y agoThis is a basic finding in experimental economics (Thaler comes to mind, but it's been a while). I remember an experiment showing this in my first class in '03 which we used as a case study for many, many lectures that followed. That it also holds for babies is quite cool. It's innate that we have strong preferences for things we have in our hands! Even if exactly it getting in our hands is totally random. Edit: Endowment effect with one famous experiment with mugs from Kahneman (1990). That's the one we replicated in class. Pretty cool come to think of it to use a famous experiment as a first introduction to the field. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect
- thaumasiotes 6y agoNote that the endowment effect does not exist when the value of the object in question is well understood. This makes perfect sense; in the words of something I read recently about the working of financial markets, "if somebody wants to trade with you, your first thought should be 'what does he know that I don't?'"
- opwieurposiu 6y agoIn my experience, whichever toy the other kid is currently playing with is the most vital item to acquire. Grass always greener starts early.
- User23 6y agoThat toy enjoys social proof, which is a fundamental concept for understanding human behavior.
- ianai 6y agoThis feels like a broad truism for much more than may be expected.
- imtringued 6y agoWhen I go to a restaurant and I don't outright dislike their food I am inclined to go there again even though there might be better places in the city.
- danoloan 6y agomy random choices NOW become my preferences
- tmaly 6y agoIf we nudge an idea into a babies head, this would seem to make the choice a bit less random. Say we play a video of another child paying on a scooter. Then we put the scooter near the child. Will the child be more likely to copy what they have seen in the video?
- drewbug 6y agoWhoever commissioned this sure hoped so: https://youtu.be/hjNVMUTq1Xs https://youtu.be/hjNVMUTq1Xs
- amelius 6y agoBut if that choice turned out badly?
- cnst 6y agoRandom preference, huh? Who wants to tell them?
- csours 6y agoThis is the fuzziest part of my human experience. Why do I like X and not Y? Why do some people like hot peppers and other people do not? When we are children, we don't have much innate fear. We don't fear falling down too much, but we can learn to fear it if we get hurt. As a kid, you can learn how to fall down without getting hurt; your head isn't so far off the ground, your bones are not brittle yet. As an adult if you fear falling down, you will almost certainly hurt yourself when you fall. If you didn't go down that path as a kid, you may never take up skiing, or mountain biking, or other sports.
- mdifrgechd 6y agoThis reminds me of the pigeon experiments[0] where pigeons were found to repeat behaviors that randomly coincided with a positive outcome. [0] https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Skinner/Pigeon/ https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Skinner/Pigeon/
- blackbrokkoli 6y agoThat is something completely different and foundational research of a whole branch of psychology (or rather, a paradigm), namely Behaviorism. I cannot see how these two studies relate to each other except both having "random" and "behavior" in the description...
- sonofgod 6y agoHmmmm. Let's assume that the baby has a perfect ordered ranking of blocks, 3 > 2 > 1, but that the experimenter doesn't know what it is. There's three scenarios for what the new, third block is: 1, 2 or 3. If it's 2 or 3, then the rejected block in the first round has a score of 1, and so we'd expect. So we'd only expect the baby to switch in a third of the cases, as opposed to 50% of the cases where the blocks are assumed to be equal. "However, in the critical test trial that followed, 16 of 21 infants (76.2%) chose the new block (block C; Fig. 1)" I can't work out the p-value vs. 66% compared to 50%, though...
- MauranKilom 6y agoMonty Hall strikes again!
- TimPC 6y agoThey aren’t switching though. They are given a choice between A&B then if they choose A they are given a choice between B&C. The choice between B&C should be 67/33 but instead it’s around 75/25 and the authors claim this is because in not choosing B the baby decided they liked B less. The evidence for this claim is that if an adult makes the first choice for the baby then the 2nd choice is 50/50.
- yamrzou 6y agoThis reminds me of the Mere Exposure Effect[0], a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect
- Androider 6y agoWe constantly lie to ourselves and to each other about why we like and do the things that we do. Split brain experiments prove a hemisphere will simply make something up, lacking some key information provided only to the other hemisphere, and you will honestly believe the made-up explanation is correct. Your entire identity, hobbies, likes and relationships are a construct of your environment, genes and randomness. I personally feel that "Being who you are", "Staying true to yourself" etc, are very negative things to tell someone, that we tell each other like crabs in a bucket. You absolutely can and should shape your identity around what type of person you want to become in the future. You can objectively look at your likes and behaviors and decide to replace them. If you're on the spectrum, like I suspect a lot of HN readers are, in some ways it's even easier to take this kind of detached view of yourself. Personally, I used to really like X, it was a core part of my identity. One day I simply decided to not do X anymore, I didn't like the people doing X and I didn't see any successful people in my orbit, and I replaced it with Y & Z. It changed the type of people I was around, it changed my career path, and my core personality. Just like you can choose to work on your computer, house, you car, etc. you can choose to work on your identity, personality and likes. There is no one true yourself, just many different versions and possibilities.
- tux1968 6y ago> Your entire identity, hobbies, likes and relationships are a construct of your environment, genes and randomness. ... > You absolutely can and should shape your identity around what type of person you want to become in the future. If your entire identity is shaped by the things you listed above, how is the "type of person you want to become" not also a product of those same things? That is, how are your wishes independent yet your identity contingent?
- Androider 6y agoI do believe your wishes and even your knowledge of the space of what is possible is a product of exactly those things. My wish to change and then taking an action to change is a function of the environment and everything that came before, probably I read or heard about it somewhere. Similarly, perhaps by me writing about it here a neuron will flip in someone else's mind that the way "they are" is not immutable, and that they can take an active role in molding their own personality and likes.
- whiddershins 6y agoI have often wondered if this can relate to whether someone is ‘good at math’ What if how it works is: we each see some math problems and symbols and make a guess as to how it works. If we are right, we decide we are good at math. If we are wrong we decide we are bad at math. Identity forms, then it is hard to revise your self assessment.
- jonnycomputer 6y agoFYI: this is a replication, in babies, of an effect seen in adults. don't worry though folks, the replication crisis worriers will just file this as exception that proves the rule
- blackbrokkoli 6y agoFirst: Do you not consider it interesting that a given effect can be already observed in earlier development stages? Second: Why do you argue against a made-up straw man "replication crisis worrier"? The crisis is based on a large percentage of studies, including foundational ones, being not yielding the same results when done again. This is not a notion you can throw out by reciting a single counter example (whose existence no one even denies?!)...
- jonnycomputer 6y agoBecause I work in the field and we replicate studies all the time.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoAfter one baby chooses, all the babies will choose it and fight over it. Seems like odd behavior...
- qq12as 6y agoDraw three independent random variables a,b,c~U[0,1]. In the first experiment, let the baby pick between a and b: of course E[a|chosen]>1/2; E[b|unchosen]<1/2. Since a,b,c are independent, E[c]=1/2. Why are they (journalist/researcher (?)) surprised that in the 2nd round the baby chooses c over b? [Of course, if you force the baby to pick either b or a in the first round, she will be equally likely to pick c or not in the second round]
- krschultz 6y agoInteresting experiment, and I think this effect can quickly get reinforced by parents (or grandparents / other family). Your kid picks a book a few times, next thing you know the parents are emphasizing IS THIS YOUR FAVORITE BOOK? There's a themed birthday party with the characters. That becomes part of the child's identity. I've found it helps to not hold any of your kids preferences static. If they like something now, don't assume they will still like it 2 weeks from now. Consciously give them the space to change their mind.
- zepto 6y agoThis does show something interesting about how choice alters preference, but it doesn’t seem to generalize to the title at all. The experimental setup doesn’t have ecological validity as a model for babies typical environments. The experimenters had to go out of their way to manufacture a situation in which the choice produced a random result. This is a clever experiment that produces a useful result about choice strengthening preference. It doesn’t however generalize into the idea that our preferences are a consequence of mere randomness. 1. In the absence of the contrived situation, choices will reflect the genetic predispositions of the baby, coupled with what is afforded by the environment. 2. If someone acts to create a contrived situation for the baby, then preferences will be systematically biased by that contrivance. Neither of these are surprising statements, although the experiments results confirm (or can be deduced from) #2. The random case doesn’t actually occur outside the laboratory, and if it did, it would be just a special case of #2. So, “who we are is just a product of random choices we made as babies” is not a good interpretation of this result because babies actually don’t make random choices unless you put them in a special laboratory situation.
- lazyant 6y agoRandomness is very underrated, I imagine because it's uncomfortable for us humans to admit to something other than a nice causal story and free will. Marvin Harris, known for his work on Cultural Materialism, writes in his books how such and such tribe are as they are, like more peaceful or belligerent due to differences in their environments, and a lot of hypothesis make sense but he ties himself in a knot trying to explain why two tribes in the Amazon that are neighbours, with the same diet etc and one is very aggressive and one is peaceful. I thought maybe by pure chance one aggressive man got to power with violence and then he and his descendants imposed that culture. Same thing with many beliefs in cultures.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoI guess I'd just call it 'learning'. Now they know about the choice they made; of course they value it over an unknown (the choice(s) not made). The human animal is characterized by this: learning from a single example. For better and worse. Its the reason we created civilization; its the reason we believe in witchcraft and the lottery. E.g. walk into a chimp's domain with a screwdriver, fool with the screw on an outlet cover, set the screwdriver on the floor and leave. The chimp may wander over, may pick up the screwdriver, might chew on it. A 3-year-old human will go straight to the screwdriver and jam it into the socket. I'm not sure anything new was shown by this experiment.
- jonplackett 6y agoThe assumption they make is that first choice is random. How can they be sure it's not some kind of innate preference?
- gdx 6y agoThey raise that possibility when discussing Experiment 3: > Recall that in the induction trial, approximately equal numbers of infants chose each block—there was no systematic preference for any particular block. But what if all infants had their own idiosyncratic but consistent object preferences? ... Then they sort of test that hypothesis in Experiment 4, by making the infants choose a block in the induction trial but then giving them the block they had not chosen – and even in this case the infants, in the next step of the trial, tend to reject the block they didn't get in the induction trial, which in this case was the block they had initially chosen. This needs to be combined with the previous findings, such as those from Experiment 2, in which the experimenters gave the infants a block, and Experiment 3, in which the infants' choice is blind (they din't know what was inside each box) — in these cases, the infants didn't show the same rejection tendency for the block they didn't get as in Experiments 1 and 4.
- jonplackett 6y agoThanks for pointing that out!
- not2b 6y agoI think it's a form of hysteresis. There's probably an evolutionary advantage to making a choice and sticking with it, if there isn't a huge advantage to one or the other, than to bouncing back and forth uncertainly. It saves time.
- zerealshadowban 6y agoAn attempt at an explanation: value is what we in fact act to gain or keep, from the simplest to the most complex objects or relations; what we have previously gained or kept is automatically recorded as a value in our mind; and thus will be emotionally perceived as a preference in the future. Some values can be and are deliberately chosen, but many are not.
- galaxyLogic 6y agoI wonder if this gives science a bad name, studying a thing that really seems quite obvious. When a baby picks a toy and finds that causes no harm but actually fun, doesn't it make sense that they would pick the same thing the next time over something different and new and unfamiliar which might not cause fun but might in fact be dangerous?
- ccvannorman 6y ago"become yourself" > "be yourself"
- Aeolun 6y agoSounds true to me. I prefer basically any choice I’ve made before to other choices that I’ve never made. I know what I’m in for. I need to explicitly choose to do/get something different.
- diogenescynic 6y agoThis is politics in a nutshell.
- unexaminedlife 6y agoFor many years I've wondered if the extremely close 50/50 splits we so frequently see in politics isn't because randomness (in some way) is playing a role.
- dsimms 6y agoThere's a scene in Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 that I think about often: Habits begin to form at the very first repetition. After that there is a tropism toward repetition, for the patterns involved are defenses, bulwarks against time and despair. He [Wahram] was very aware of this, having lived the process many times; so he paid attention to what he did when he traveled, on the lookout for those first repetitions that would create the pattern of that particular moment in his life. So often the first time one did things they were contingent, accidental, and not necessarily good things on which to base a set of habits. There was some searching to be done, in other words, some testing of different possibilities. that was the interregnum, in fact, the naked moment before the next exfoliation of habits, the time when on wandered doing things randomly. The time without skin, the raw data, the being-in-the-world.