one.pseudocyborg

I wanted to influence people. I'd heard a Radio Lab report explaining that our "gut" reactions are informed by a very basic set of parameters. I thought those parameters were information that had been reinforced over a lifetime of making good and bad choices, and instead found out that those parameters are a very fundamental on/off switches, and that it doesn't change based on experiences in the larger world.

The experiments referenced in the Radio Lab discussion suggested that someone can be "primed." Ie: stimuli can be introduced that predispose us towards certain choices and behaviors. Our positive and negative opinions (if we "like" or "dislike" somthing) can be influenced by handing the decider something warm (to make them "like" the concept) or something cold (to make them "disklike" that same thing). The heat and cold isn't related to the object they're liking or disliking. The article suggests that this is a very basic attraction to comfort - warm = good, survival, comfort, family, cold = rejection, outsider, possibly even death. The primer in the experiment was a warm / iced cup of coffee. The test group was asked if they liked "Joe" (for a given set of generic characteristics for Joe). Those who held the warm cups liked Joe. Those who held the cold cups didn't.

But I didn't want to replicate the experiment. At first because it simply wasn't that fun an idea to hand a warm cup of coffee around to my classmates. But also because I find the scientific process (even in the case of this experiment) very interesting. The conclusions of the group above seemed to me to ignore a whole host of factors, including the fact that "Joe" is not an opinionless name.

At the same time that this article came out I'd read another one on I09 about the technologies of mind-reading, and how this very moment they're available to us. Inspiration hit me with a bang! I thought that I'd build a machine that was ostensibly going to reproduce the I09 article, but instead, covertly, would have hot and cold sensors, and I would influence my test subjects into giving me the answers I wanted from them. Although my experiment would pretend to be about turning a mystical concept like mind reading into a scientifically proveable demonstration, I would instead be like the magician who uses distraction and misdirection to achive my own purposes. And this is how it came about ....

tools: a spool of wire, wirecutters, the box of the kit i used to make my sound effects

For the purposes of my experiment I wanted to create a machine that made sounds. Preferably it would have two sounds: one to indicate "yes" and the other to indicate "no."

What I found instead was a circut kit that made "cool sound effects" of a space battle.

Since part of my experiment was to complicate the entire process of experiments, I thought having more than two sounds (that rotated in a series of about 5, from shooting laser sounds to small explosions) would be confusing and kind of wonderful at the same time.

The circut you see above had a photosensor built as part of the on/off switch, but since I was embedding this device inside a box I couldn't count on light to activate it.

Luckily it also came with a simple 'on/off' switch as well!

I'd also bought a really cool red-LED lit toggle that I connected to my snap-circut system with copper wire. This then was at the top of the box, my ostensible "on" switch for mind reading.

In the side of the box I embedded a second switch that would actually complete the circut and get sound to come out of my speaker (the red speaker on the left of the image here). I would use this to "predict" the answers on the minds of my participants.

I was also hoping to amplify the sound in my little system, but found that the problem with kits is the most fun parts are harder to work around - the small green box with a "3" on it (right) was both an amplifier and the chip contianing the multiple sounds. There was no way to amplify this without either breaking it apart or attaching a whole new chip / amplifier.

Oh, and I put in some new batteries, because part of the quiet was from a dead battery!

building: seeing inside the mind-reading box - a speaker, connections made in wire, and my button

painting: the patterns i used on the box and the blots i created from watercolor paints

The other half of my experiment: I would have two participants look at identical paint blots, and while they had their hands on my "sensors" they would decide if they liked the blots or not.

Creating paint blots is fun. I hesitated about my color choice, since I know that blue and green are some of the most common "favorite" colors, but then decided that I liked blue and green, and that at least those two colors had less immediate associations (unlike red and yellow, which tend to polarize responses, I think)

I also decorated the "mind reading box" with gold paint. I wanted the designs to recall some of the more elaborate vaudville styles, so that when I did my experiment I could be part scientist and part magician.



I took my "priming" activities very seriously. Although my covert priming would be the heat pack that I had inserted into one of my "mind reading sensors", and the cold pack that I inserted into the other, I also created a power point (slides seen to the right). My purpose was twofold. First I wanted to gesture to the scientific process I was ostensibly creating, so I looked up a definition of the Scientific Method and reproduced it on my first slide. I then created a series of slides that mirrored the process that would fit with my ostensible experiment in mind reading.

However, if you examine the "facts" that I present above, you'll note that they are not so much facts as debatable suppositions. I did this hoping I would create a sense of disquiet in my audience, hoping that they would question my authority to state these "facts" and thus wonder exacly what experiment I was conducting.				Finally I left this particular slide up on the overhead while I asked for volunteers to particpate in the experiment. Two people at a time were given my ink-blot cards. They were also given a "yes" and "no" card. I asked them to put their hands on the censor (so one person touched the cold pack, the other the warm pack). I turned away while they considered if they "liked" or "didn't like" the blot in front of them. I asked them to show the audience their "yes" card if they liked the blot, and their "no" card if they didn't, and remained turned away until they put the cards down. Then I pushed my mind reading box towards them, and pressed my "on" button, making the space-sounds come out for each answer.

				I kept the set of cards I got correct in one pile, and the set of cards I didn't predict accurately in another pile. At the end of the experiment I had correctly predicted 7 out of 10 responses.