'Law-Like' Mathematical Patterns in Human Preference Behavior Discovered

[The Straight Story]

'Law-Like' Mathematical Patterns in Human Preference Behavior Discovered

ScienceDaily (May 27, 2010) — In a study appearing in the journal PLoS ONE, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) scientists describe finding mathematical patterns underlying the way individuals unconsciously distribute their preferences regarding approaching or avoiding objects in their environment. These patterns appear to meet the strict criteria used to determine whether something is a scientific law and, if confirmed in future studies, could potentially be used to guide diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders.

"Law-like processes are important in science for their predictive value, and finding patterns in behavior that meet criteria for lawfulness is extremely rare," explains Hans Breiter, MD, principal investigator of the MGH Phenotype Genotype Project in Addiction and Mood Disorder (http://pgp.mgh.harvard.edu), who led the study. "The patterns we observed appear to describe the unconscious range of preference an individual has with a specificity suggestive of that of a fingerprint. We look forward to learning what other scientists find about these patterns." These patterns -- which the authors group together under the name relative preference theory -- incorporate features of several older theories of reward and aversion into a single theory.

The PLoS ONE study reports on the outcome of three sets of experiments. In each, healthy participants were presented with a series of images and could vary the amount of time they viewed each image by pressing the keys of a keypad. The first group of participants viewed a series of four human faces -- average-looking male, average-looking female, attractive male and attractive female. The second group was presented with a series of photographs of images ranging from children, food, sports and musical instruments to war, disaster, and drug paraphernalia. The third group viewed four different images of food -- two of normal appearing meals, one in which the food was abnormally colored, and one of raw, unprepared food -- on two different days. For one viewing, participants were hungry, for the other, they had just eaten. Responses were measured by whether participants increased, decreased, or did nothing to change how long they viewed particular images.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100527013329.htm

[Duer 157099]

1. I don't know why, but this makes me happy

:shrug:

[WeDidIt]

2. This is why predicitive analytics works and why so many companies are investing in the technology.nt

[tabatha]

3. Survival .....

"which includes the fact that people are more strongly motivated to avoid negative outcomes than to attain positive outcomes".

I am sure all living creatures have the instinct to avoid negative outcomes, thus enhancing survival. It would be interesting to do it on animals as well.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. The implications are astounding

For politics, advertising, crowd control, and more