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 mnogih godina, bez podizanja velike prašine oko toga, vlasti u Njujorku onemogućile su većinu kontrolnih dugmadi koja su nekada kontrolisala signalizaciju za pešačke prelaze u gradu. Kompjuterizovani tajmeri, odlučili su oni, skoro uvek su radili bolje. Do 2004. godine ostalo je u funkciji manje od 750 od ukupno 3.250 takvih tastera. Gradska uprava, međutim, nije uklonila isključene tastere – ostavila je da bezbrojni prsti uzalud pritiskaju. U početku, dugmad su preživela zbog troškova njihovog uklanjanja. Ali se ispostavilo da čak i neoperativni tasteri služe svrsi. Pešaci koji pritisnu dugme imaju manje šanse da pređu pre nego što se pojavi zeleno svetlo na semaforu, kaže Tal Oron-Gilad sa Univerziteta Ben Gurion u Negevu, u Izraelu. Pošto je proučavala ponašanje na prelazima, ona primećuje da se ljudi spremnije povinuju sistemu koji pokazuje obzir prema njihovom doprinosu. Neoperativni tasteri proizvode placebo efekte ove vrste, jer ljudi vole kontrolu nad sistemima koje koriste, kaže Eitan Adar, stručnjak za interakciju čoveka i kompjutera na Univerzitetu Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr Adar primećuje da njegovi učenici obično dizajniraju softver sa klikom na dugme „sačuvaj“ koji nema drugu ulogu osim da dodatno uveri one korisnike koji nisu svesni da se njihovi pritisci na tastaturu automatski snimaju. Smatrajte to, kaže on, kao dobronamernu obmanu za suprotstavljanje urođenoj hladnoći sveta mašina. To je jedan pogled. Ali, bar na putnim prelazima, placebo dugmad mogu imati i lošu stranu. Ralf Riser (Ralf Risser), šef FACTUM-a, bečkog instituta koji proučava psihološke faktore u saobraćajnim sistemima, smatra da je saznanje pešaka o njihovom postojanju i posledična ljutnja zbog obmane sada veća od koristi. |