5 ms·

Results of Bruce Schneier's experiment in trust

53 points by TallGuyShort 14y ago

nodata 14y ago
He mailed the books in November, then it was Christmas, and he's complaining that there are not enough reviews on 11 January? That's not an exercise in trust, that's an exercise in priorities! Spend time with family/relax, or earn 5 bucks for a book review?
- gpvos 14y ago
  September.
- BudVVeezer 14y ago
  I sort of agree... But a contrary view is that the holidays are when most people are on vacation, and hence more likely to read a book and have time to write a review. Assuming they had time to read the book, it's not like the review requires a considerable time investment (comparatively).
- javajosh 14y ago
  I'm not sure about the details, either. "Please review my book" is a lot more nebulous than "please post a review to amazon using your account, and email me the link to this address." 10% is probably an upper bound on how many people review their purchases on Amazon.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- B-Con 14y ago
  Only one person in the comments mentioned getting the book in late November. The offer closed on Aug. 18, and I've gotten a book from him before that was mailed promptly. That one person may be an outliar.
- greenmountin 14y ago
  I got mine in late September. Read the introduction and wasn't enthused [probably shouldn't have read the introduction]. It's on my todo list, but perhaps I failed to give him the compounding returns of the buzz he was going for.
mistercow 14y ago
>What is certain is that a great majority of people decided not to uphold their end of the bargain. Phrased that way, the statement is absolutely incorrect. What is very likely is that a great majority won't uphold their end of the bargain. What is also very likely is that few if any of those made a decision not to uphold their end of the bargain. Anybody who had that intention from the outset would have simply torrented the book. Anybody who didn't have that intention from the outset is unlikely to switch intentions. This is known as "consistency bias". But what does happen is that people make commitments and then forget about them if the stakes are low. That is almost certainly what has happened in virtually every case of noncompliance in Schneier's experiment. I have a lot of respect for Schneier and his security and cryptography work. But his science fu is revealed in this article to be rather weak, as is his understanding of human psychology.
- B-Con 14y ago
  > What is also very likely is that few if any of those made a decision not to uphold their end of the bargain. I disagree. Although I agree that it is unlikely that it was their intent from the outset, there is a threshhold at which point someone has practically decided not to do something. Once they have procrastinated on doing something for X months and know that it is only #73 on their internal priority list, they have essentially decided not to do it. It could happen, but the odds are, what, maybe 10%? If you assume that a commitment to do something is giving a 100% guarantee and a commitment to not do something is a 0% guarantee, a 10% chance is, pragmatically, a "no". Also, part of the implied deal was that you write the review promptly. From the original blog post where Schneier made the book offer: > Liars and Outliers has been out since late February, and while it's selling great, I'd like it to sell better. So I have a special offer for my regular readers. I don't think he was hoping they would send in their reviews a year or two later. Those who do would have a hard time arguing that they met the spirit of the deal. The initial blog post was almost exactly 5 months ago and the offer was closed in two days, which means that a lot of readers probably got their books at least 4 months ago. (In my experience he does ship promptly, as I have gotten a book from him before.) If he was hoping that they would write their review in a reasonable amount of time, say 8 months, and only 9% wrote a review in the first half, I highly, highly doubt that even 41% will write a review in the second half. And the majority of those who will not probably subconsciously know it by now. Edit: To be specific, I don't think he expected 90% turnout by this date, he's just disappointed that the turnout is so low by now. It's not even 1 in 10. 4 months is a decent amount of time to review a book you agreed to review.
jackalope 14y ago
This seems more like an exercise in advertising than in trust. And with a 9% response rate, it just might be a successful one, if the reviews generate enough sales.
Tichy 14y ago
Perhaps a lot of people haven't read it yet. Especially if it is a special offer, the likelihood for the book to go into the "want to read eventually" pile is quite high.
jellicle 14y ago
His initial request was weak, so compliance was weak. It didn't feel like much of a commitment. ("My only request is that...") There's lot of research into getting people to make and fulfill commitments. If for example he had made everyone write out "I promise to write a review of this book within two months of receiving it and post said review online", compliance would have been much higher. If they had been required to post that promise publicly to their friends when they made it, compliance would have been higher still.
- jere 14y ago
  I agree. When I read this article I was shocked at the low compliance, but when I read the original offer... it didn't really seem like an "agreement" at all. >My only request is that, after you read the book, you post a review about it somewhere. On your blog, on Amazon, on -- I suppose -- Twitter. Just let people know about it. The final sentence reduces it to a "make sure you tell your friends about us", which one usually responds "Ok. I will" but doesn't really plan to do so.
  - emil10001 14y ago
    The other odd thing about this particular case is that the book's topic seems to include this sort of scenario. Maybe people did read the book with the intention of writing a review, and started wondering if this was some sort of twisted test. E.g. "If I read the book, and follow through with the agreement, will I be tallied among a group of weak individuals?" It seems that if you want to be able to draw conclusions about a social experiment like this, don't screw up the results by introducing a variable (the contents of the book itself) that could alter the results.
- mistercow 14y ago
  People are going to start thinking I'm affiliated with Robert Cialdini's publisher with how often I bring this up, but for anyone interested in more of these sort of techniques and hacks, his book Influence: Science and Practice (or the non-textbook version, which I think is essentially the same content, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion) is a must read.
car54whereareu 14y ago
Why is this an experiment in trust? Seems like trust wasn't isolated. Reading is hard enough, and even Schneier admits writing can be hard.
droithomme 14y ago
In the comments one of the recipients notes that he only received the book in late November. This was just as people were getting into the busy holiday season. He really can't come to any conclusions yet as 6 weeks there has not been enough time for people to write their reviews. He acknowledges this, but discards it, and concludes in essence that most people are thieves who obtained the book under false pretenses. In a year he could make that case, and even then it would only be reasonable if he sent out a few reminders. I am glad to see though that he did publish lists of the reviews he did find so that anyone whose review was overlooked has a chance to respond. Unfortunately, his post there ruins the experiment. I did not participate in the experiment but if I had and was about to go live with my review and then suddenly was publicly accused of being a thief, I would not go forward with an ordinary review publication since it would seem at that point to be trying to wiggle out of something. Instead I would write a blistering criticism of his methodology. The claims and article are so shoddy in fact that it damages my opinion of his work overall. I sometimes write book reviews on my blog. I don't accept free or discounted books, it's just books I've read. I have quite a backlog. Right now I have a stack of 30 books that I will read. Some of these I won't get to for a couple years. Not every one of them will merit a review. It's not reasonable for an author to expect amateur reviewers will get to their book within a few weeks of receiving it, especially when there is no stated deadline. Additional thoughts: * Reading further through the comments on his blog, in the first few comments I found 15 people who mention they are in the process of reading it, or who have not gotten to it yet but plan to. There were more; I just stopped counting at 15. There are no comments (among those first ones at least) from people gloating that they got away with an unwarranted discount. Several fulfill their obligation inline by posting their review thoughts right there in his blog. * It should also be mentioned also that these days even hardcover books in modest quantity are very inexpensive to print when there's no color plates, so the $11 paid almost certainly ensured that money was not lost on the deal as far as printing and shipping costs goes. * Deep down in the comments Scheiner responds to the comments and it seems he realizes he screwed up with his post and drastically underestimated the number of people who take a while to get around to and complete reading a book.
- jimhefferon 14y ago
  > concludes in essence that most people are thieves I think that's a little more than he concludes. He is always thoughtful, which is a good reason to read him, and he takes pains to say at the end he wasn't complaining only noting. (I don't know if you posted before he added that.) If I can give my $0.02, coming from my perspective as having worked on a free archive for a long time. My personal experience with giving to people "out there" is that you can expect little return, beyond personal gratification. However, on reflecting on my experience, I've decided that I can't say that the people are freeloaders; probably most of them coach little league, or help out in meals on wheels, or shovel the walk of the old lady down the street. But everybody is very busy and while they sincerely intend to be part of the pay-it-forward group, on any one thing the return rate is just low. Myself, I do the same stuff.
aaron695 14y ago
WTF Who necessarily reads books within 4 months of buying? I have many, many bought and borrowed books 3+ years old in my to read pile. I think this is Bruce Schneier's way off the mark, even inappropriately so. His book culture is not everyone else's and he shouldn't by default expect that from them. Paying $11 for a book and then having to do a review is not an amazing deal for the buyer. It's just a deal. If no time line was specified in the deal people have every right to read the book when it suits them. They didn't save $5-$15 to get a chore. For me that would have been a within a year estimate.
redwood 14y ago
Check out this wonderful read in a similar tho more interesting vein: "What the bagel man saw", the economic and psychological takeaways of a former economist turned honor-system-based bagel salesman http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/magazine/06BAGEL.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/magazine/06BAGEL.html?page...

53 points by TallGuyShort 14y ago

He mailed the books in November, then it was Christmas, and he's complaining that there are not enough reviews on 11 January? That's not an exercise in trust, that's an exercise in priorities! Spend time with family/relax, or earn 5 bucks for a book review?

gpvos 14y ago
September.
BudVVeezer 14y ago
I sort of agree... But a contrary view is that the holidays are when most people are on vacation, and hence more likely to read a book and have time to write a review. Assuming they had time to read the book, it's not like the review requires a considerable time investment (comparatively).
javajosh 14y ago
I'm not sure about the details, either. "Please review my book" is a lot more nebulous than "please post a review to amazon using your account, and email me the link to this address." 10% is probably an upper bound on how many people review their purchases on Amazon.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
B-Con 14y ago
Only one person in the comments mentioned getting the book in late November. The offer closed on Aug. 18, and I've gotten a book from him before that was mailed promptly. That one person may be an outliar.
greenmountin 14y ago
I got mine in late September. Read the introduction and wasn't enthused [probably shouldn't have read the introduction]. It's on my todo list, but perhaps I failed to give him the compounding returns of the buzz he was going for.

mistercow 14y ago

>What is certain is that a great majority of people decided not to uphold their end of the bargain. Phrased that way, the statement is absolutely incorrect. What is very likely is that a great majority won't uphold their end of the bargain. What is also very likely is that few if any of those made a decision not to uphold their end of the bargain. Anybody who had that intention from the outset would have simply torrented the book. Anybody who didn't have that intention from the outset is unlikely to switch intentions. This is known as "consistency bias". But what does happen is that people make commitments and then forget about them if the stakes are low. That is almost certainly what has happened in virtually every case of noncompliance in Schneier's experiment. I have a lot of respect for Schneier and his security and cryptography work. But his science fu is revealed in this article to be rather weak, as is his understanding of human psychology.

B-Con 14y ago
> What is also very likely is that few if any of those made a decision not to uphold their end of the bargain. I disagree. Although I agree that it is unlikely that it was their intent from the outset, there is a threshhold at which point someone has practically decided not to do something. Once they have procrastinated on doing something for X months and know that it is only #73 on their internal priority list, they have essentially decided not to do it. It could happen, but the odds are, what, maybe 10%? If you assume that a commitment to do something is giving a 100% guarantee and a commitment to not do something is a 0% guarantee, a 10% chance is, pragmatically, a "no". Also, part of the implied deal was that you write the review promptly. From the original blog post where Schneier made the book offer: > Liars and Outliers has been out since late February, and while it's selling great, I'd like it to sell better. So I have a special offer for my regular readers. I don't think he was hoping they would send in their reviews a year or two later. Those who do would have a hard time arguing that they met the spirit of the deal. The initial blog post was almost exactly 5 months ago and the offer was closed in two days, which means that a lot of readers probably got their books at least 4 months ago. (In my experience he does ship promptly, as I have gotten a book from him before.) If he was hoping that they would write their review in a reasonable amount of time, say 8 months, and only 9% wrote a review in the first half, I highly, highly doubt that even 41% will write a review in the second half. And the majority of those who will not probably subconsciously know it by now. Edit: To be specific, I don't think he expected 90% turnout by this date, he's just disappointed that the turnout is so low by now. It's not even 1 in 10. 4 months is a decent amount of time to review a book you agreed to review.

jackalope 14y ago

This seems more like an exercise in advertising than in trust. And with a 9% response rate, it just might be a successful one, if the reviews generate enough sales.

Tichy 14y ago

Perhaps a lot of people haven't read it yet. Especially if it is a special offer, the likelihood for the book to go into the "want to read eventually" pile is quite high.

jellicle 14y ago

His initial request was weak, so compliance was weak. It didn't feel like much of a commitment. ("My only request is that...") There's lot of research into getting people to make and fulfill commitments. If for example he had made everyone write out "I promise to write a review of this book within two months of receiving it and post said review online", compliance would have been much higher. If they had been required to post that promise publicly to their friends when they made it, compliance would have been higher still.

jere 14y ago
I agree. When I read this article I was shocked at the low compliance, but when I read the original offer... it didn't really seem like an "agreement" at all. >My only request is that, after you read the book, you post a review about it somewhere. On your blog, on Amazon, on -- I suppose -- Twitter. Just let people know about it. The final sentence reduces it to a "make sure you tell your friends about us", which one usually responds "Ok. I will" but doesn't really plan to do so.
- emil10001 14y ago
  The other odd thing about this particular case is that the book's topic seems to include this sort of scenario. Maybe people did read the book with the intention of writing a review, and started wondering if this was some sort of twisted test. E.g. "If I read the book, and follow through with the agreement, will I be tallied among a group of weak individuals?" It seems that if you want to be able to draw conclusions about a social experiment like this, don't screw up the results by introducing a variable (the contents of the book itself) that could alter the results.
mistercow 14y ago
People are going to start thinking I'm affiliated with Robert Cialdini's publisher with how often I bring this up, but for anyone interested in more of these sort of techniques and hacks, his book Influence: Science and Practice (or the non-textbook version, which I think is essentially the same content, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion) is a must read.

car54whereareu 14y ago

Why is this an experiment in trust? Seems like trust wasn't isolated. Reading is hard enough, and even Schneier admits writing can be hard.

droithomme 14y ago

In the comments one of the recipients notes that he only received the book in late November. This was just as people were getting into the busy holiday season. He really can't come to any conclusions yet as 6 weeks there has not been enough time for people to write their reviews. He acknowledges this, but discards it, and concludes in essence that most people are thieves who obtained the book under false pretenses. In a year he could make that case, and even then it would only be reasonable if he sent out a few reminders. I am glad to see though that he did publish lists of the reviews he did find so that anyone whose review was overlooked has a chance to respond. Unfortunately, his post there ruins the experiment. I did not participate in the experiment but if I had and was about to go live with my review and then suddenly was publicly accused of being a thief, I would not go forward with an ordinary review publication since it would seem at that point to be trying to wiggle out of something. Instead I would write a blistering criticism of his methodology. The claims and article are so shoddy in fact that it damages my opinion of his work overall. I sometimes write book reviews on my blog. I don't accept free or discounted books, it's just books I've read. I have quite a backlog. Right now I have a stack of 30 books that I will read. Some of these I won't get to for a couple years. Not every one of them will merit a review. It's not reasonable for an author to expect amateur reviewers will get to their book within a few weeks of receiving it, especially when there is no stated deadline. Additional thoughts: * Reading further through the comments on his blog, in the first few comments I found 15 people who mention they are in the process of reading it, or who have not gotten to it yet but plan to. There were more; I just stopped counting at 15. There are no comments (among those first ones at least) from people gloating that they got away with an unwarranted discount. Several fulfill their obligation inline by posting their review thoughts right there in his blog. * It should also be mentioned also that these days even hardcover books in modest quantity are very inexpensive to print when there's no color plates, so the $11 paid almost certainly ensured that money was not lost on the deal as far as printing and shipping costs goes. * Deep down in the comments Scheiner responds to the comments and it seems he realizes he screwed up with his post and drastically underestimated the number of people who take a while to get around to and complete reading a book.

jimhefferon 14y ago
> concludes in essence that most people are thieves I think that's a little more than he concludes. He is always thoughtful, which is a good reason to read him, and he takes pains to say at the end he wasn't complaining only noting. (I don't know if you posted before he added that.) If I can give my $0.02, coming from my perspective as having worked on a free archive for a long time. My personal experience with giving to people "out there" is that you can expect little return, beyond personal gratification. However, on reflecting on my experience, I've decided that I can't say that the people are freeloaders; probably most of them coach little league, or help out in meals on wheels, or shovel the walk of the old lady down the street. But everybody is very busy and while they sincerely intend to be part of the pay-it-forward group, on any one thing the return rate is just low. Myself, I do the same stuff.

aaron695 14y ago

WTF Who necessarily reads books within 4 months of buying? I have many, many bought and borrowed books 3+ years old in my to read pile. I think this is Bruce Schneier's way off the mark, even inappropriately so. His book culture is not everyone else's and he shouldn't by default expect that from them. Paying $11 for a book and then having to do a review is not an amazing deal for the buyer. It's just a deal. If no time line was specified in the deal people have every right to read the book when it suits them. They didn't save $5-$15 to get a chore. For me that would have been a within a year estimate.

redwood 14y ago

Check out this wonderful read in a similar tho more interesting vein: "What the bagel man saw", the economic and psychological takeaways of a former economist turned honor-system-based bagel salesman http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/magazine/06BAGEL.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/magazine/06BAGEL.html?page...