5 comments

  • dang 6 hours ago

    This is the "can I make some copies because I need to make some copies" experiment that Robert Cialdini wrote about in his fantastic book Influence.

    https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11348375

    • gwern 4 hours ago

      At this point, most of the stuff in a corrected edition of _Influence_ would have a bunch of asterisks in it or have to be deleted for failing to replicate or being fraudulent. I wonder how well this old social psych priming/influence experiment has held up...

      • dang 3 hours ago

        It's still a great book because his anecdotes are so fun. The sequel was terrible though.

  • krzat 4 hours ago

    This kind of human interaction is way too quick to have any deeper thinking involved. Because brains are prediction machines, if something unexpected happens that requires a quick response, it will be fully handled via autopilot.

    If it was done via text messages I would expect a different outcome.

  • plesner 5 hours ago

    Their model of scripts and mindlessness is only one of many possible explanations of the behavior they're seeing. And I don't even know where to start with the sending letters to random doctors thing.

    Is this actually a thing that was/is taken seriously?