Category Archives: Human Behavior

That social media can be addictive and creepy isnt a revelation to anyone who uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like. But in Jeff Orlowskis documentary The Social Dilemma, conscientious defectors from these companies explain that the perniciousness of social networking platforms is a feature, not a bug.

They claim that the manipulation of human behavior for profit is coded into these companies with Machiavellian precision: Infinite scrolling and push notifications keep users constantly engaged; personalized recommendations use data not just to predict but also to influence our actions, turning users into easy prey for advertisers and propagandists.

As in his documentaries about climate change, Chasing Ice and Chasing Coral, Orlowski takes a reality that can seem too colossal and abstract for a layperson to grasp, let alone care about, and scales it down to a human level. In The Social Dilemma, he recasts one of the oldest tropes of the horror genre Dr. Frankenstein, the scientist who went too far for the digital age.

In briskly edited interviews, Orlowski speaks with men and (a few) women who helped build social media and now fear the effects of their creations on users mental health and the foundations of democracy. They deliver their cautionary testimonies with the force of a start-up pitch, employing crisp aphorisms and pithy analogies.

Never before in history have 50 designers made decisions that would have an impact on two billion people, says Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google. Anna Lembke, an addiction expert at Stanford University, explains that these companies exploit the brains evolutionary need for interpersonal connection. And Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook, delivers a chilling allegation: Russia didnt hack Facebook; it simply used the platform.

Much of this is familiar, but The Social Dilemma goes the extra explainer-mile by interspersing the interviews with P.S.A.-style fictional scenes of a suburban family suffering the consequences of social-media addiction. There are silent dinners, a pubescent daughter (Sophia Hammons) with self-image issues and a teenage son (Skyler Gisondo) whos radicalized by YouTube recommendations promoting a vague ideology.

This fictionalized narrative exemplifies the limitations of the documentarys sometimes hyperbolic emphasis on the medium at the expense of the message. For instance, the movies interlocutors pin an increase in mental illness on social media usage yet dont acknowledge factors like a rise in economic insecurity. Polarization, riots and protests are presented as particular symptoms of the social-media era without historical context.

Despite their vehement criticisms, the interviewees in The Social Dilemma are not all doomsayers; many suggest that with the right changes, we can salvage the good of social media without the bad. But the grab bag of personal and political solutions they present in the film confuses two distinct targets of critique: the technology that causes destructive behaviors and the culture of unchecked capitalism that produces it.

Nevertheless, The Social Dilemma is remarkably effective in sounding the alarm about the incursion of data mining and manipulative technology into our social lives and beyond. Orlowskis film is itself not spared by the phenomenon it scrutinizes. The movie is streaming on Netflix, where itll become another node in the services data-based algorithm.

The Social DilemmaRated PG-13 for dystopian speculation and some graphic images of violence. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Watch on Netflix.

Human Behavior

Children Will Wait to Impress OthersAnother Twist on the Classic Marshmallow Test – Newswise

September 10, 2020 medical

Newswise If you asked people to name a famous psychology study, themarshmallow testwould probably come out near the top of the list. In this task, young children are told they can immediately get a small reward (one marshmallow) or wait to get a bigger reward (two marshmallows). Researchers have shown that the ability to wait is associated with a range of positive life outcomes, including higher SAT scores more than a decade later.

A new study published in the journalPsychological Scienceexpands on this earlier research and shows that young children will wait nearly twice as long for a reward if they are told their teacher will find out how long they wait.

The classic marshmallow test has shaped the way researchers think about the development of self-control, which is an important skill, said Gail Heyman, a professor at the University of California San Diego and lead author on the study. Our new research suggests that in addition to measuring self-control, the task may also be measuring another important skill: awareness of what other people value. In fact, one reason for the predictive power of delay-of-gratification tasks may be that the children who wait longer care more about what people around them value, or are better at figuring it out.

For their study, Heyman and her colleagues from UC San Diego and Zhejiang Sci-Tech University conducted two experiments with a total of 273 3- to 4-year-old children in China.

The researchers told the children that they could earn a small reward immediately or wait for a bigger one. Children were assigned to one of three conditions: a teacher condition, in which they were told that their teacher would find out how long they wait; a peer condition, in which they were told that a classmate would find out how long they wait; or a standard condition that had no special instructions.

Children waited longer in the teacher and peer conditions than in the standard condition, and they waited about twice as long in the teacher condition as compared to the peer condition.

The researchers interpreted the results to mean that when children decide how long to wait, they make a cost-benefit analysis that takes into account the possibility of getting a social reward in the form of a boost to their reputation. These findings suggest that the desire to impress others is strong and can motivate human behavior starting at a very young age.

The researchers were surprised by their findings because the traditional view is that 3- and 4-year-olds are too young to care about what other people think of them.

The children waited longer in the teacher and peer conditions even though no one directly told them that its good to wait longer, said Heyman. We believe that children are good at making these kinds of inferences because they are constantly on the lookout for cues about what people around them value. This may take the form of carefully listening to the evaluative comments that parents and teachers make, or noticing what kinds of people and topics are getting attention in the media.

# # #

Related research on the marshmallow test:

Marshmallow Test Redux: New Research Reveals Children Show Better Self-Control When They Depend on Each Other

A New Approach to the Marshmallow Test Yields Complicated Findings

Deficit or Development? APS 2019 Keynote Address

Group norms influence individual self-control in children

The studys co-authors are Fengling Ma, Dan Zeng and Fen Xu from Zhejiang Sci-Tech University; and Brian J. Compton from the University of California San Diego.

The contributions of Fengling Ma were supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31400892), the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (LY17C090010), and the China Scholarship Council.

# # #

Psychological Science, the flagship journal of APS, is the leading peer-reviewed journal publishing empirical research spanning the entire spectrum of the science of psychology. For a copy of this article, Delay of Gratification as Reputation Management, and access to other research inPsychological Science, contactnews@psychologicalscience.org.

Ma, F. et al. (2020). Delay of Gratification as Reputation Management.Psychological Science,https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797620939940

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Children Will Wait to Impress OthersAnother Twist on the Classic Marshmallow Test - Newswise

Human Behavior

COVID-19 travelers want the beach, so whats happening to Tampa hotels? – Tampa Bay Times

September 10, 2020 medical

TAMPA Jeny Guichardo sweeps through the Hilton Tampa Downtown hotel lobby at least once an hour.

She cradles a tub of Lysol wipes in her arms while clutching disinfectant spray and a rag. Wearing a blue surgical mask and plastic gloves, she wipes elevator buttons, handrails and table tops.

Hilton hotels have launched the CleanStay program. It calls for regular surface wipe-downs. Each guest room is sealed with a sticker to show it has been cleaned and left undisturbed. Guests can check in online and use their smartphone as their room key. It is technological convenience meets pandemic demand.

We are giving our guests a real sense of feeling safe so they continue to stay with Hilton, said the Tampa hotels general manager, Raul Aguilera.

The hotel industry in 2020 is reeling unlike ever before. But Floridas beachfront hotels, including those in Pinellas County, are showing signs of recovery.

It is going to be a slower climb back to booked-up rooms for most inland destinations.

With large-scale events, conventions and conferences mostly on hold, Tampas tourism industry has been upended. In Hillsborough County, hotels have been at about 40 percent capacity during periods they are normally nearly full.

So most hoteliers are doing whatever they can to put visitors' minds at ease.

Fall usually means a slowdown in tourist activity across Tampa Bay. But tourism-backed businesses hope this season will be the exception, that numbers will continue rising toward pre-pandemic levels.

A lot of things are so different now," said Santiago Corrada, CEO of Visit Tampa Bay. Who knows when that pent up demand to travel kicks in. Its hard to predict human behavior."

Tampa Bays visitor numbers usually drop off after Labor Day and dont pick up again until the new year before peaking around spring break. But this year, spring break came as coronavirus did, devastating local businesses that are still trying to make up lost revenue.

Hillsborough County has long been tasked with crafting a tourism identity separate from beaches by attracting large-scale events like Wrestlemania, which was canceled in April, or the Super Bowl, which is scheduled to be in Tampa in February. The Tampa Convention Center is usually booked, feeding local hotel stays. Since March, 63 events to be held at the convention center were called off or rescheduled. Business groups have called off hotel conferences and weddings booked in banquet halls are in limbo.

There is no sugar coating this reality, said Bob Morrison, the executive director of the Hillsborough County Hotel Motel Association.

But Morrison is noticing subtle shifts: Virtual business meetings are becoming smaller in-person hotel meetings. Banquets halls are hosting some smaller wedding parties. Childrens sporting tournaments, a quiet boon for the local tourism industry, are still being held.

Una Garvey, the convention centers director, said business and association gatherings have been rescheduled and new ones are still being booked all the way up to 2027. She said event planners are eager for a time they can feel safe in large groups.

We should be proud were in a better positions than other cities, Garvey said, referring to the number of upcoming events. We have suffered through this experience but we are going to regain quickly.

From hotels to small local shops, business owners are eager for that bounce back whenever it comes. Even though Hillsboroughs modest occupancy rates of 40 to 45 percent are higher than other cities not known for access to nature, its unclear how long they can survive on limited business.

Morrison worries about what happens as the money from the federal Paycheck Protection Program loans runs out. Hotels are already operating with limited staffs, having furloughed the bulk of their workers after all-time low occupancy rates in March and April.

Up until COVID-19, the demand for Tampa hotels had been growing. The massive JW Marriott Tampa on Water Street is scheduled to open before the year ends. Ybors newest boutique hotel, Hotel Haya, is scheduled to open within a couple weeks. Other high-rise hotels are under construction and slated to open next year.

On one hand, its absolutely what the market needed, Morrison said, On the other side of the coin, this season probably the toughest for new inventory to be introduced.

Corradas team at Visit Tampa Bay has been retooling its marketing to reach travelers with outdoorsy interests. Their ads emphasize the River Walk, kayaking, hiking and biking destinations within Hillsborough. Theyre trying to attract those from drivable distances looking for a staycation, the same way Pinellas has done with its beaches. Its just more of a challenge without the beach.

Corrada said those online ads recently pulled in $3 million worth of hotel bookings, which was nearly all leisure travelers. He said Visit Tampa Bay which had to lay off 40 of its staffers because of the pandemic will spend another up to $3 million on similar marketing in the coming months.

Tourists not only fill hotels, Corrada said, but they spend big at restaurants and stores. They pay bed taxes for hotel stays and sales taxes while shopping and dining.

The income tax we dont have in Florida is because we are so healthy on the tourism side you can make up the revenue with people out of state coming and spending money here, he said.

Tourists, he said, pay for transportation and education. Florida is built to function largely off the money spent by outsiders.

For hoteliers, its survival mode holding on until, they hope, a vaccine is mass produced and the Super Bowl, at least in some capacity, still comes to town.

At the Hilton Tampa Downtown, there are travelers hunched over laptops in the lobby, spread several feet apart. Each of their rooms comes with a set of Lysol wipes. There are no more loose pens or menus left at their bedside. Room service is delivered sealed in takeout containers.

Although we are not in the same world as last year," said Aguilera, the hotel manager, "we have kept our doors open,

In 2020, that means something.

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COVID-19 travelers want the beach, so whats happening to Tampa hotels? - Tampa Bay Times

Human Behavior

Warm weather increases human mobility, and SARS-CoV-2 transmission – News-Medical.Net

September 10, 2020 medical

There have been several studies showing that with human coronaviruses other than the SARS or SARS-CoV-2 pathogens, the virus persists for shorter periods in warmer weather than in other conditions. A recent study published on the preprint server medRxiv in September 2020 shows that the effect of climatic factors such as temperature and humidity is mediated mostly through human mobility. Thus, human behavioral changes are still the mainstay of containment rather than hoping for weather conditions to keep the virus at bay.

Some earlier papers support a seasonal pattern for the COVID-19 pandemic, especially since the earlier viruses have shown similar stability characteristics in the laboratory setting. Again, prior research shows that the virus rapidly becomes unviable in hotter, more humid climates, which has caused the epidemic curve to appear quite different in tropical and subtropical countries as well. The virus has been shown to spread more rapidly in cold, dry conditions.

This has given rise to quite a few studies which model or estimate seasonal changes in viral transmission based on the temperature in various cities. Some have produced firm conclusions that climate may be of marginal significance. On the other hand, recent empirical studies have been completed, which support earlier projections of the adverse effects of warmth and humidity on virus survival. However, the evidence is still insufficient for any firm conclusions to be drawn.

As of now, dry cold regions where the temperature is between 40 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit may be responsible for greater viral spread, the largest reduction being by 30% to 40% at temperatures above 25 degrees. However, even this reduction is inadequate to arrest the exponential spread of the virus, and such temperatures are found in only some parts of the world. Thus, most outbreaks are seen to form in cold and dry areas all over the world.

Nonetheless, the link between temperature variations and the inhibition of the spread of COVID-19 appears to be weak.

The researchers comment, Even if one assumes that SARS-CoV-2 is as sensitive to climate as other seasonal viruses, summer heat still would not be enough right now to slow down its rapid initial spread through the human population.

Some other studies show that the number of daily deaths is related to the diurnal range of temperature, as well as the number of cases and the mean temperature. However, there is no proof that the case count reduces when the temperature rises. In fact, some have raised doubts as to the existence of such a relationship between virus survival and high temperature and humidity.

When adjusted for variables such as population size, population density, and the expenditure on health during January to March, the results still showed that the highest growth of the pandemic was in the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, when the mean temperature was 5 degrees Celsius, with a specific humidity of 4-6 g/m3.

Other climate factors like solar radiation, wind factors, and rain have not been well studied in this regard. However, the presence of rain and wind typically pushes up the rate of transmission, perhaps not due to viral factors but because people tend to stay indoors. One study found that exposure to ultraviolet radiation in sunlight had a U-shaped relationship with the transmission rate. This would mean that temperate climate zones would experience a drop in the viral spread during summer. Still, in tropical countries, the transmission would go up because of the very intense ultraviolet exposure at these times. Some other researchers have shown that ultraviolet exposure is beneficial in hindering the pandemic.

The wind speed could carry respiratory droplets for much farther distances, but could also impair the stability of the droplet and the survival of the virus, which would lead to reduced transmission. In Turkey, for instance, the wind speed with a 14-day lag, that is, as recorded 14 days before the case count of interest, showed a positive association, and this correlation is supported by some other researchers, but not by all.

The current study by a French research team finds that climate has a nonlinear effect on the viral spread, modulated by mobility, which is influenced by climatic conditions. Temperature and humidity, when examined singly, affect the case and fatality counts much less when appropriate 28-day lags are used to allow the effects of infection to appear. When all climate-related factors are modeled together, temperature and ultraviolet radiation have the strongest correlation with the pandemic.

The ultraviolet radiation was found to have an inverted U-shaped relationship with cases; only at very high levels of radiation will cases be significantly reduced.

However, when an interactive model is used, temperature, humidity, and solar radiation have strong combined negative correlations with cases and fatalities. Still, warm sunny days encourage mobility, which partly cancels out the reduction in fatality rate caused by climate factors. On the other hand, favorable temperatures reduce indoor crowding and may reduce transmission in this way.

Rather than using straightforward findings such as an increasing fatality rate with increasing mobility, and a higher case rate associated with lower mobility, it is necessary to control for reverse causation and other confounding factors. For instance, as the number of cases increases, restrictions on mobility are likely to come into play. And as lockdowns are implemented, the fatality rate comes down but over a different timescale. Thus, such factors must be taken into account.

Again, mobility will push up the number of infections in a seven-day period of sunshine, with the sunshine strengthening this effect. With a 28-day lag being applied to detect fatalities stemming from this exposure, however, the effect is more significant. This reflects the greater ability of the latter parameter to capture the change in the pandemic with the weather.

The researchers point out, Increasing individual mobility is a factor of virus spread: when more people are more mobile, the social distancing is likely to be reduced and the transmission rate to increase.

The primary channels through which climate factors lead to alterations in the viral transmission rate are, therefore physical, and mediated by human behavior, mainly mobility. Thus, the hottest summers are likely to add only a little to the positive effects of strict physical distancing, especially since while the hot weather and solar radiation reduce viral fitness, social distancing is likely to be neglected as well as hand and face hygiene. Thus, such seasons will call for measures like mask-wearing and social distancing to be implemented more stringently.

The researchers call for more work on air quality and pollution as other modifying factors on climate-related risk in the current model. Pollution, for instance, is known to increase the intensity of the virus. A more holistic view would lead to recommendations embracing the need to forswear unsustainable human activity, mitigate climate change, and other broad-based action to prevent interspecies transmission of such novel pathogens and thus forestall future pandemics.

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.

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Human Behavior

Pence Capital Management Achieves More Than $1 Billion In UIT Assets Across The Firm’s Fast-Growing Portfolio Strategies – PRNewswire

September 10, 2020 medical

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., Sept. 10, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Pence Capital Management ("the firm" or "PCM"), a leading investment adviser firm, announced today that it has surpassed $1 billion in assets across five fast-growing Unit Investment Trust (UIT) strategies for which the firm serves as Portfolio Consultant. This includes the Ubiquitous Strategy Portfolio, which Nasdaq ranked No.1 in Capital Appreciation for Domestic Equity UITs by five-year composite performance as of June 30, 2020.

Dryden Pence, Founder of Pence Capital Management, said, "We are thrilled by the success of our unit investment trust offerings, including one that is in the top of its class compared to industry peers. That so many investors have sought to meet their needs and objectives using these strategies is a validation of all the hard work our team has put in to coming up with a unique approach that seeks to spot future value. Because UITs typically issue redeemable securities, conduct a one-time public offering of a fixed number of units and are created with a termination date until which time they hold a relatively stable portfolio, they are an ideal vehicle to ride companies poised to benefit from specific investment themes."

The firm's Unit Investment Trusts that collectively have exceeded $1 billion in assets are the Ubiquitous Strategy Portfolio UIT, the Building America Strategy Portfolio UIT, the Human Behavior Strategy Portfolio UIT, the Recovery Strategy Portfolio UIT and the Transformers Strategy Portfolio UIT. Advisors Asset Management (AAM), an SEC registered investment advisor based in Monument, Colorado, is the distribution sponsor of these UITs.

Nasdaq Information Services publishes a monthly UIT Scorecard in partnership with Investment Goal Strategy that breaks down top performers by asset classification, performance timeframe, distribution sponsor, strategy cumulative return and strategy compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Pence Capital Management's Ubiquitous Strategy Portfolio UIT outpaced all others in the Domestic Equity category with a strategy cumulative return of 180.20% and a strategy CAGR of 22.88% for the five-year period beginning July 2015.

Dryden Pence continued, "Our success has been driven by a unique understanding of consumer behavior, which allows us to identify big knowable themes and critical supply chain choke points. This approach has only become more vital in the current macroeconomic environment, where dire challenges to public health are reshaping commerce trends and consumer attitudes."

About Pence Capital ManagementFounded in 2015 and based in Newport Beach, CA, Pence Capital Management (PCM) is a leading investment adviser firm that delivers unique, proprietary strategies and portfolio consultant services involving Unit Investment Trusts (UITs). Our disciplined methodology understands the role of psychology and competitive strategy in maximizing investment opportunities. As of June 30, 2020, Pence Capital Management advised or consulted on sevenUITs with total combined assets of approximately $1.3 billion. These UITs are distributed through Advisors Asset Management and First Trust Portfolios. For more information, please visit https://pencecapital.com/

Our services are limited to the structure or design of each UIT and do not include a periodic review of performance. Clients are responsible for the direct use of the UITs and the management of underlying client assets.

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and there can be no assurance that the future performance of any specific investment, investment strategy, or product (including the investments and/or investment strategies made reference to directly or indirectly in this message) will be profitable, equal any corresponding indicated historical performance level(s), be suitable for your portfolio or individual situation, or prove successful. You should not assume that any discussion or information contained in this message serves as the receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice.

Media Contacts:Michael DuganorMitch ManningHaven Tower Group LLC424 317 4852 or 424 317 4858[emailprotected]or[emailprotected]

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Pence Capital Management Achieves More Than $1 Billion In UIT Assets Across The Firm's Fast-Growing Portfolio Strategies - PRNewswire

Human Behavior

SIUE Hiring New Faculty Members to Increase Diversity in Educators – Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

September 10, 2020 medical

September 9, 2020 | :

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) is hiring four new faculty members at the urging of Dr. Robin Hughes, dean of the SIUE school of education, health and human behavior, KMOV4 reported.

Dr. Robin Hughes

The cluster hire was requested by Hughes, who stressed the need for hiring more faculty of color, according to KMOV4.

We know that it not only translates in the classrooms but it also translates to sending out good folks into the workforce that are prepared for globalization, Hughes said.

According to KMOV4, the hires were achieved through the universitys strategic hiring funds made available through the office of the provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs and the office of institutional diversity and inclusion.

Human Behavior

The Economics of Violence by Giant Oak Founder and Georgetown University Professor Gary M. Shiffman, Recognized for Contributing to the Professional…

September 10, 2020 medical

ARLINGTON, Va., Sept.10, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Giant Oak is delighted to announce that our founder and CEO Gary M. Shiffman's new book, The Economics of Violence: How Behavioral Science Can Transform Our View of Crime, Insurgency, and Terrorism, has been selected as a finalist for "Best New Nonfiction Book" and as a winner by the American Book Fest's 2020 International Book Awards (IBA) in the category "History: Military." The creator of the Machine Learning platform GOST, Shiffman leverages his deep study in human behavior and organized violence and coercion to offer tools to promote peace and liberty.

The American Book Fest's Best Book Awards, now in its 17th year, represent one of the largest and most competitive mainstream book awards in the United States. Jeffrey Keen, president and CEO of American Book Fest, said, "This year's contest yielded over 2,000 entries from authors and publishers around the world, which were then narrowed down to the final results."

"It is an honor to have The Economics of Violence recognized by the International Book Awards," said Shiffman. "I wrote this book to empower those engaged in keeping us safe and free, and to inform the public on new approaches to enhancing public safety and security. I use case studies to make arguments articulating a new analysis of violence based on economics and using the terminology of markets."

Shiffman is a U.S. Navy Gulf War veteran, a former chief of staff for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and a former U.S. Senate National Security Advisor. He teaches at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Screeners at financial institutions and government agencies use GOST to detect threats to public safety and security, including human and drug trafficking, money laundering, and terrorism.

To learn more about The Economics of Violence, click here.

About Giant OakAt Giant Oak, we build trusted tools at the frontiers of behavioral science and artificial intelligence that enable you to make both rapid and informed decisions in an increasingly dynamic security environment. Giant Oak Search Technology (GOST) makes screening easy. GOST is an open-source search and triage tool that builds a custom internet domain and organizes information to detect suspicious behavior. GOST re-indexes the open and deep webs to return publicly available electronic information (PAEI) in prioritized results relevant to the user's requirements. By deploying machine-learning algorithms to refine search results and generate analytic scores, entities are sorted by relevance and threat level. For more information, visit http://www.giantoak.com.

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The Economics of Violence by Giant Oak Founder and Georgetown University Professor Gary M. Shiffman, Recognized for Contributing to the Professional...

Human Behavior

Amid Protests And Change, Iowa Police Training On Implicit Bias Varies – Iowa Public Radio

September 10, 2020 medical

In 2015, the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy lacked training on implicit bias.

As a cadet there then, Natasha Greene sought discussions on her own about some of the mistaken beliefs officers might hold of others, such as expecting a black person to be dangerous or more crime prone from stereotypes, ideas that could come from television or passed from family and friends.

Now an Iowa State Police Department officer, Greene said these conversations were uncomfortable, as awkward as telling someone the zipper on their pants is down but you still do it.

If Im talking to somebody I care about and their flys down, of course Im going to tell them their flys down because it would be more harmful for me to just let them carry on without knowing, Greene said.

Today those discussions are more serious and more uncomfortable as the May 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police brought the Black Lives Matter movement and calls for defunding police. Implicit bias and training officers became part of the national conversation.

In Iowa, protests and demonstrations, at times destructive, ensued after Floyds death. In June, lawmakers and Gov. Kim Reynolds responded with a law banning the use of chokeholds and requiring yearly implicit bias training for in-service officers.

The protests and cases continued. In Indianola last week, Simpson College classes were canceled for a daylong and peaceful protest in which Black students demanded action from school leaders. In Rochester, N.Y., last week video of police apprehending David Prude was released. Prude later died after that March incident. In Wisconsin, protests persist after the police Aug. 23 shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, who is now paralyzed.

IowaWatch

The ILEA, which trains hundreds of the states officers, added the implicit bias training last fall to its future classes, Director Judy Bradshaw said. This action is several years behind other Iowa police training programs and other states, a monthslong IowaWatch review found.

Before attending the academy, Greene, whose family includes minorities, confronted her unknown racial biases while working for an organization for victims of sexual assault and abuse.

I think its important for people to also understand that while their intentions may be to treat everyone equally, or that they truly believe that theyre able to look impartially on every situation, psychology just says that thats not the case, Greene said.

Human condition

Implicit bias is a human condition, said Kevin Pokorny, who owns a Des Moines consulting company and has taught businesses and police departments on the topic. It is the idea that people all have biases, often unbeknownst to them, that could affect decisions, behaviors and actions.

People hold unknown biases about religions, race, gender and age groups, said Amanda Greider, Cedar Rapids Police Department public safety program manager. Greider, who is white, teaches implicit bias at their police academy.

The topic is often part of the conversation after police killings of Black people such as Floyd because it is believed these biases can affect quick-second decisions officers make on a daily basis.

The brain categorizes things very quickly in our subconscious, Pokorny said, to the extent that when we get involved in situations where we have to make decisions about people or places or things, our brain just makes unconscious associations, and evaluations about it and we act on it.

Implicit bias training around the state

The Iowa Law Enforcement Academy currently includes several courses on race relations, cultural competency and de-escalation but never a class focused on the officers implicit biases.

The 625-hour program averages between 76 to 96 trainees a session, or 228 to 288 trainees a year.

The Cedar Rapids Regional Police Academy added implicit bias training four years ago.

Greider said the push to add the program came from their police chief, Wayne Jerman, after he said other programs around the country incorporate it. Even with the pandemic, the annual two-hour training for their officers will take place virtually.

It has to be top of mind to be successful, Greider said.

The Des Moines Police Academy and the Iowa Department of Public Safety offer courses that include implicit bias like the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy, but do not have a specific implicit bias course.

Bradshaw, who formerly served as Des Moines police chief, said now is the time for those in law enforcement to sit back and listen.

Its truly about respect, and thats showing respect on both sides, Bradshaw said. Part of the problem is that weve created these divides, and the we/they. So really the discussion is: how do we come together and strengthen the relationship?

How do we get that trust back and build on it?

Training around the state

The ILEA council aoversees regional police academies in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, the Iowa Department of Public Safety, and the Hawkeye Community Technical College and Western Iowa Technical Community College police programs though their coverage of cultural competency and implicit bias looks different at each agency.

The new hires at the Cedar Rapids Regional Police Academy have taken 3.5 hours of implicit bias training since 2016. The program also includes four hours of instruction on cultural competency, an hour on race relations, two hours on hate crimes and an hour on civil rights.

Cedar Rapids officers also take two hours of implicit bias training annually.

Other Iowa academies include implicit bias training but incorporate it into their cultural competency courses.

The Iowa Department of Public Safety has a four-hour de-escalation course, implemented in 1993 as verbal judo. The four-hour cultural responsive law enforcement course, which included implicit bias, was added in the early 2000s.

In an email, DPS Lt. David Halverson wrote 10 officers were certified in their fair and impartial policing curriculum that focuses on the science of implicit bias. Iowa DPS plans to expand this to the rest of their officers this year.

The Des Moines Police Academy includes five hours of a cultural awareness course, which was created in 2017. Sgt. Paul Parizek wrote in an email implicit bias training is included in this course and their 44 hours of critical incident training. In-service officers have taken two hours of implicit bias training annually since 2017.

The practices also vary from state to state.

The University of Illinois Police Institute offers an optional nine-hour course on police in a multiracial society, which includes implicit bias training. Missouri requires an hour of racial profiling training annually.

Bradshaw said the academy needs to do more research to determine how many hours of implicit bias will be incorporated into their program.

Changes in Iowa bittersweet

The death of Floyd sparked calls to action across the country.

In Iowa, the governor, Reynolds, signed a bipartisan police reform bill June 12 after it passed unanimously in the Iowa House and Senate. Iowa is one of 11 states to enact legislation and Iowa and New York were the first to do so, according to data tracked by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The bill, on top of creating more police accountability and putting restrictions on chokeholds, required the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy to create and disseminate yearly training on bias prevention and de-escalation. (Reynolds also signed an executive order to restore felon voting rights.)

Legislators like Rep. Ras Smith, D-Waterloo, said the action was a first step, but more needs to be done.

It was bittersweet because I understood what it took to get here but I also understand that this was an easy first step, Smith said. So now its maybe a little bit of frustration with people who are willing to stand up and say that they were supportive of equity, equality, and justice in some scenarios. I want to see where they stand on this when its not so posh to do it, when its not so convenient.

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Smith and other Democratic representatives wrote House File 2646, which would have required each state and local law enforcement agency to collect data on each traffic, bicycle or pedestrian stop, to be reported July 1 each year.

The agencies would report the race and ethnicity of the person stopped by an officer, paired with what the reason for the stop, whether force was used and if a search was conducted.

This language did not progress this legislative session, even though police reform across the country is data-driven. Smith said Reynolds rejected the data study and worked with the Senate to draft the training portion of the bill.

Reynolds office did not respond to a request to comment asking about why the data study was rejected.

Smith said the data could have created more specific training for Iowa officers.

The bill and implicit bias training are a start, but individuals get to reflect also, said Sharon Zanders-Ackiss, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement special projects organizer. Iowa CCI is a community activist group based in Des Moines. The group worked with the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP and ACLU of Iowa to get a racial profiling ordinance passed through the Des Moines City Council in June.

You can have all the implicit bias training in the world, but if youre not changing as an individual and how you can see people that dont look like yourself, well, training may not necessarily help you, Zanders-Ackiss said. If it did, we wouldnt keep having the same problems that were having.

Zanders-Ackiss said she wants to see more of a focus on de-escalation, instruction on how to resolve a situation without physical force.

Mixed results?

There isnt clear evidence implicit bias training works.

A 2017 meta-analysis in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found implicit bias training could have an impact on implicit measures but little evidence shows impact on explicit behavior. Studies on implicit bias training showed that white people could learn the correct answers for a bias quiz but did not retain the information, according to the Harvard Review.

Smith, the state lawmaker, said one of the priorities when drafting police reform legislation was holding officers accountable. The Iowa Attorney General can now investigate deaths caused by law enforcement and block the hiring officers with prior felonies.

Bradshaw agreed the training piece needs to be paired with accountability.

The accountability part is purely cultural with law enforcement entities and agencies, Bradshaw said. We can train you, and you are going to go back to your own culture. You are going to go back to the personality of your police department and you are going to go back to doing things your way if the strategies and the procedures remain the same.

How bias training came to ILEA

The Iowa Law Enforcement Academy, based in Johnston, is overseen by a council, comprised of current and former police chiefs, officers and private citizens, that assists, advises and approves the curriculum. The council has one Latino member and the rest are white. Seven members are male and three are female.

After the fall curriculum review, the academys council recommended a recognizing bias course be incorporated into the basic academy.

The academy educates officers from departments across the state. The vast majority of sheriffs deputies around the state train there, Linn County Sheriff Brian Gardner, president of the ILEA council, wrote in an email to IowaWatch. Linn County has the second-largest sheriffs office in Iowa.

IowaWatch

The academys decision to include bias training in the fall basic academy was independent of the recent protests, though President Obamas Task Force on 21st Century Policing recommended the training following the Ferguson unrest in 2014. The 2014 mass demonstrations came after an officer in Ferguson, Missouri, shot and killed Michael Brown.

The future officers will take five hours of cultural competency and two hours of race relations, according to the academys training schedule. The training also includes four hours of use of force, eight hours of verbal defense a term for deescalation and an hour of ethics and professionalism.

In the last week, trainees take a class called blue courage, which helps officers identify why they joined the force, what their role means and their biases.

Iowa Code requires 30 hours of training be devoted to human behavior courses, which include studying community relations, ethics and ethnic and minority groups.

Other ways the training is taught

Outside training hours required, practices tend to differ as well.

These are grownups, these are adult learners that we are teaching at the police academy. Its not like we are teaching sixth-graders where there is some room for maneuvering and shaping and conditioning of peoples minds, Bradshaw said. For folks to think that trainings the answer to this, were just a piece of this.

Officer Natasha Greene (left) poses with students and a former Iowa State officer at the 2019 Destination Iowa State, a welcome week for incoming students. As an engagement and inclusion officer, Greenes job includes creating relationships with marginalized groups around campus and educating fellow officers on diversity and inclusion. (Photo courtesy of Natasha Green)

The Des Moines Police Department focused on community policing in the mid-90s, Ackiss-Zanders said, something she hopes they return to. During that time, Ackiss-Zanders said she saw more officers in Black-majority neighborhoods, getting out of their patrol cars and interacting with the people.

Right now the police talk about a murder happens here. They cant get any information from the community, Ackiss-Zanders said. Well, how about this. If you continue building relationships with people in the community, Im sure you probably get a bunch of information.

This is the concept at Iowa State where Greene is an engagement and inclusion officer. The EIO officers, on top of typical police responsibilities, create relationships with minority groups on campus and educate fellow officers on cultural competency.

The EIO model works partially because officers learn lessons of bias from their fellow officers, Greene said. The Cedar Rapids Police Academys implicit bias class is taught by former officer Grieder. She said a lot of the training has to do with trust since officers are sharing their biases.

My background (as an officer) is really crucial, otherwise they just make this assumption that this is a person who doesnt get our job, Greene said, adding a fellow officer could also be dismissed if there is a bias against them. I think there are benefits to both, which is why we do utilize both internal and external sources.

Danielle Gehr, an Iowa State University graduate, fulfilled a summer 2020 reporting internship for IowaWatch.

Excerpt from:
Amid Protests And Change, Iowa Police Training On Implicit Bias Varies - Iowa Public Radio

Human Behavior

Combatting COVID-19 misinformation with machine learning (VB Live) – VentureBeat

September 10, 2020 medical

Presented by AWS Machine Learning

As machine learning has evolved, so have best practices, especially in the wake of COVID-19. Join this VB Live event to learn from experts about how machine learning solutions are helping companies respond in these uncertain times and the lessons learned along the way.

Misinformation around COVID-19 is driving human behavior across the world. Here in the information age, sensationalized clickbait headlines are crowding out actual fact-based content, and, as a result misinformation spreads virally. Conversations within small communities become the epicenter of false information, and that misinformation spreads as people talk, both online and off. As the number of misinformed people grow, this infodemic grows.

The spread of misinformation around COVID-19 is especially problematic, because it could overshadow the key messaging around safety measures from public health and government officials.

In an effort to counter misinformed narratives in central and west Africa, Novetta Mission Analytics (NMA) is working with Africa CDC (Center for Disease Control) to discover and identify narratives and behavior patterns around the disease, says David Cyprian, product owner at Novetta. And machine learning is key.

They supply data that measures the acceptability, impact, and effectiveness of public health and social measures. In turn, the Africa CDC analysis of the data enables them to generate tailored guidelines for each country.

With all these different narratives out there, we can use machine learning to quantify which ones are really affecting the largest population, Cyprian explains. We uncover how quickly these things are spreading, how many people are talking about the issues, and whether anyone is actually criticizing the misinformation itself.

NMA uncovered trending phrases that indicate worry around the disease, mistrust about official messaging, and criticisms of local measures to combat the disease. They found that herbal remedies are becoming popular, as is the idea of herd immunity.

We know all of these different narratives are changing behavior, Cyprian says. Theyre causing people to make decisions that make it more difficult for the COVID-19 response community to be effective and implement countermeasures that are going to mitigate the effects of the virus.

To identify these narrative threads, Novetta ingests publicly-available social media at scale and pairs it with a collection of domestic and international news media. They process and analyze that raw social and traditional media content in their ML platform built on AWS to identify where people are talking about these things, and where events are happening that drive the conversations. They also use natural language processing for directed sentiment analysis to discover whether narratives are being driven by mistrust of a local government entity, the west, or international organizations, as well as identifying influencers that are engendering a lot of positive sentiment among users and building trust.

Pieces of content are tagged as positive or negative to local and global pandemic measures and public entities, creating small human-labeled data sets about specific micronarratives for specific populations that might be trading in misinformation.

By fusing rapid ingestion with a human labeling process of just a few hundred artifacts, theyre able to kick off machine learning and apply it to the scale of social media. This allows them to have more than one learning model that is used for all the problem sets.

We dont have a one-size-fits-all approach, says Cyprian. Were always tuning and researching accuracy for specific narratives, and then were able to provide large, near-real-time insights into how these narratives are propagating or spreading in the field.

Built on AWS, their machine learning architecture allows their development team to focus on what they do well, which is develop new applications and new widgets to be able to analyze this data.

They dont need to worry about any server management, or scaling, since thats taken care of for them with Amazon EC2 and S3. Their microservices architecture uses some additional features that Amazon offers, particularly Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), to orchestrate their services, and Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), to store images and run vulnerability testing before they deploy.

Novettas approach is cross-disciplinary, bringing in domain experts from the health field, media analysts, machine learning research engineers, and software developers. They work in small teams to solve problems together.

In my experience, thats been the best way for machine learning to make a practical difference, he says. I would just urge folks who are facing these similar difficult problems to enable their people to do what people do well, and then have the machine learning engineers help to harden, verify, and scale those efforts so you can bring countermeasures to bear quickly.

To learn more about the impact machine learning solutions can deliver and lessons learned along the way, dont miss this round table with leaders from Kabbage and Novetta, as well as Michelle K. Lee, VP of the Amazon Machine Learning Solutions Lab.

Dont miss out!

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Speakers:

Human Behavior

Modeling the impact of testing, tracing, and quarantine – ScienceBlog.com

September 10, 2020 medical

Testing, contact tracing, and quarantining infected people are all tools in the effort to mitigate the spread of Covid-19. So are mask-wearing and social distancing. But what impact does each have? A study co-authored by MIT researchers finds that robust testing, contact tracing, and quarantining by household can keep cases within the capacity of the health-care system preventing a second wave while allowing for the reopening of some economic activities.

Thepaper, published Aug. 5 inNature Human Behaviour, details a novel model that integrates anonymized, real-time mobility data with census and demographic data to map Covid-19 transmission in the Boston, Massachusetts area. The authors include Esteban Moro, a visiting research scientist in the MIT Media Lab and MIT Connection Science, and Alex Sandy Pentland, director of MIT Connection Science and a professor in the Media Lab and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS).

This research sheds new light on possible pitfalls and solutions as cities look to lift restrictions that have been in place throughout the summer in many locations. Using data from approximately 85,000 people in the greater Boston area, combined with known information about Covid-19 transmission rates, duration of stages, and other data points, the authors model forecasts the number of new cases and hospitalizations under various scenarios of lifted restrictions.

If we want to re-scale our lives, economy, and cities, we need to understand better how the infection is spreading across people and communities, says Moro. Shutting down the whole economy and our cities because of a second wave might not be needed if we include accurate information about how people are behaving, moving, shopping, et cetera in our society.

In establishing a baseline, the study found that unmitigated lifting of restrictions would likely lead to a second wave that would quickly overwhelm Bostons health-care facilities, with peak of daily incidence of 25.2 newly infected individuals per 1,000 people, leading to a need for about 12 times the available intensive-care unit (ICU) beds.

A second scenario, referred to as LIFT, assumed an additional eight weeks of stay-at-home order, followed by another four of partial reopening, including work and community spaces, but not full reopening of restaurants and other spaces with mass social gatherings. After the total 12-week period, there would be a full lifting of all restrictions. In the LIFT scenario, the modeled impact was still well beyond the capacity of health-care facilities, with a need for over nine times the ICU beds available at the peak of the likely second wave.

It might be that only a safe, effective, and widely distributed vaccine will allow the world to return to life as usual. However, the authors propose a third scenario called LET, short for Lift and Enhanced Tracing that keeps cases and hospitalizations manageable while allowing for a wide return to work and social activity.

The LET scenario involves the same LIFT measures, but adds robust testing, contact tracing of symptomatic people, and quarantining of all household members of people who came in close contact with someone who tests positive for the virus. After lifting restrictions, at rates of 50 percent detection of positive cases within two days of onset of symptoms, tracing of 40 percent of contacts, and quarantine of all household members of those contacts, the model shows just 0.29 people per thousand in hospitals per day, compared with more than five per day under LIFT measures alone and more than seven under the unmitigated scenario. ICU beds would be more than adequate at all times under this scenario.

The advantage of whole-household quarantine is that it simplifies contact tracing, working at the level of small groups of people, rather than individuals. Followup calls to check for compliance would also be streamlined. Furthermore, the model assumes no additional precautions, such as masks and social distancing. Therefore, it is expected that new cases and hospitalizations could be even lower if people were to continue some of the practices that have helped combat the spread of Covid-19 thus far.

This approach is not without sacrifice. Quarantining full households presents unique challenges it might be hard for quarantined families to obtain necessities, and quarantining together with others with known risk of infection may not be desirable. The study notes that at the peak, with 40 percent contact tracing, as many as 9 percent of all people in the city could be under quarantine. However, this number would gradually decline to around 3 percent. The total number in quarantine could be further reduced if testing ramps up more significantly. The authors suggest that the trade-off of higher numbers of people in quarantine compared with the massively disruptive long-term social isolation policies that would otherwise be needed to keep new infections manageable is well worth it. Life could return to some degree of normalcy, and the economy could begin to recover.

Since the study was carried out, Massachusetts has moved toward a manual tracing strategy in which thousands of people have been hired to trace potential infections. Moro explains that this could work if the number of cases is small and controlled, but it might be insufficient if the number of cases scales up. He also notes that hiring contact tracers has been problematic. He suggests a possible solution to deal with sudden growth in the number of cases: combine manual and digital contact tracing via an app.

The model used in the study will continue to be developed and enhanced, and the authors plan to examine other cities beyond Boston. They will use real-time behavior data to investigate how infection is actually propagating and detect when, where, and why spreading events are happening.

MIT Connection Science is a research group hosted by the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center, a part of IDSS.

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Modeling the impact of testing, tracing, and quarantine - ScienceBlog.com