
Results of Bruce Schneier's experiment in trust - TallGuyShort
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/01/experimental_re.html
======
mistercow
>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.

~~~
ChuckMcM
This is something I've been thinking about a bit lately, the difference
between 'intent' to renege, vs 'just happened' to renege on a previous
agreement. I had a manager once who well tell people in all earnestly that he
was going to work to get them promoted, but when that didn't happen the
question became did he lie? did he do the work and not succeed? Could he have
even succeeded ? The person who stuck around waiting for the promotion feels
completely let down and lied to, regardless.

So how do we make conditional commitments? Sometimes it annoys people when I
won't answer yes or no to a commitment but instead say "I'll do my best." When
pressed I can articulate the various uncertainties between now and the
execution of the commitment that could derail it, but they are just that
uncertain. Sometimes people say "Just say yes, and if something comes up let
me know." I've done this in the past and had people accuse me of 'making
excuses' which of course I feel is unfair :-).

There is certainly an element of 'value' here in that the consequence of not
doing something has a cost and if the cost is small sometimes less effort is
made in the follow through. If money is involved that is generally a more
explicit definition of cost. But if someone says, "Hey my son Jimmy is on the
special team at this weekend's High School football game, can you come by and
cheer him on?" what is the cost of being unable to do that? Sometimes small
(there are lots of people at the game) and sometimes large (this person really
wanted to see you validate their support of their child's athletic activities)
and sometimes in the middle.

Schneir positioned the transaction into the 'trust' category, you say you will
do something and I trust that you will do it. The consequence of you not doing
it is a loss of trust on my part. But the trust currency isn't previously
established. Clearly my kids have a vested interest in keeping my trust level
high because I can restrict access to the vehicles, but Bruce doesn't know me,
and if he trusts me more or trusts me less do I care? Do I care $29 worth? Or
more importantly do I care 'marginal value of Bruce's book minus $11' worth?

As you can read its something I wonder about but have few really solid lines
of reasoning about. A lot of questions, a lot of speculation about the
intrinsic forces in the 'trust market' and no clear experimental path.

~~~
wamatt
You raise a really interesting point here, and it seems there may be an
opportunism vs principles dynamic at play.

Without debating the orthogonality of that assumption, (because it really
won't change the overall point), let me begin by saying, most if not all
humans I've encountered, have varying levels of principles and opportunism,
but we are not made equal (CF fallacy of gray).

>I won't answer yes or no to a commitment but instead say "I'll do my best."

I am one of those, that have traditionally found that statement slightly
annoying, especially in a business context. It just seems slippery. What does
"doing your 'best' mean? Are you truly going to do your _very_ best and drop
everything to fulfill the request? I think not. Hence the precision one is
aiming for, does not seem like an improvement on the original brevity of the
yes/no.

Furthermore it could give one an opportunity to flake and blame the
environment, versus sticking to one's word.

~~~
ChuckMcM
_"I am one of those that have traditionally found that annoying, especially in
a business context. I seems slippery. What does "doing you 'best' mean? Are
you truly going to do your very best and drop everything to fulfill the
request? I think not. Hence the precision one is aiming for, does not seem
like an improvement on the original brevity of the yes/no."_

I completely understand this response, I actually really do mean I will do
everything I possibly can to meet this obligation, but also recognize my
commitment is not equivalent to other commitments by people who might use the
same phrase.

I find myself stuck in this dilemma:

1) I can say "no" which cuts off the conversation and makes me appear
unsupportive.

2) I can say "No, I don't think I will be able to." Which at least invites the
requestor to inquire further.

3) I can say "I'll do my best" which accurately conveys my personal intent but
sounds weak to the recipient.

4) I can say "Sure, I can probably do that" where I signal that my intent is
yes but I can see issues which may interfere with my execution.

5) I can say "Sure" and 'bet on the come' as they say in Vegas which means
that if things outside of my control happen in the best possible way I'll be
able to fulfill the obligation, and if they don't I'll fail at filling the
obligation and let you down.

I have observed that option 5 is the normal usage. It results in experiences
like the one Bruce had where there are lots of commitments and not necessarily
a lot of follow through. And at low "value" in terms of the commitment/cost
the discussion of how much trust is impacted is interesting.

I've also observed that people in management that always say "yes" even if
they only deliver a smaller percentage of the time on their commitments are
more successful (in terms of raises, promotions etc) than people who actually
only commit to things they actually think they can do[1]. So as a success
strategy always saying yes, regardless of your understanding seems like a
winning strategy. I personally can't do that though, I'm sure it has hindered
my career :-).

[1] There is also a very real thing that you can often do more than you think
you can, so sometimes over-comitting gets you to a higher level of efficiency.
It still annoys me when someone signs up to do something that I know for a
fact they won't be able to deliver, and they get full credit for the signup
anyway.

------
nodata
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?

~~~
javajosh
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.

------
jellicle
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
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
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.

------
droithomme
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
> 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.

------
jackalope
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
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.

------
redwood
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?page...](http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/magazine/06BAGEL.html?pagewanted=all)

------
aaron695
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.

------
car54whereareu
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.

