we use social signaling to communicate in ways we aren't aware of. In tests researchers found they could successfully predict outcomes of conversations based entirely on body language. The fact that most people are unconscious of these signals means you can hack them. This is largely what the "pick-up" community is about.
Studying body language reveals really interesting things during group tasks. It reminds me of a study on how perceived authority makes people jerks, even when leaders are picked out of thin air. Researchers did something similar to the study in the link - break people into small groups; give the subjects a fake task that they thought they were working on together but were unknowingly being tested on how subtle teamwork and leadership issues; randomly assigned somebody to be a leader; etc.
Then they gave them cookies to eat while they did their work.
And they found - without fail! - that it was always the leader that ate an extra cookie (they'd serve 4 cookies for 3 people), ate and spoke with their mouths open, spilled crumbs everywhere, did the least work, and just were general slobs. Regardless of gender, education, yadda yadda.
I thought this was the entire appeal of being a leader in the first place. what would be the point of being a leader if you didn't get the extra cookie?
Dacher Keltner (or his lab at UC-Berkeley) did the original research. I can't find this one specifically, but their website is http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~keltner/
Uh-huh. The next study will reveal that the sky is blue and the water is wet.
This should be obvious for anyone who has spent a number of years in the corporate world - have you never seen that staple of the corp environment, the moron with no skills but a loud mouth and no scruples?
Studies which confirm intuitive truths can be valuable, especially when that truth is cultural or contradicted by other popular wisdom (i.e. "it is better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt;" or contrast this American study's results with the common idea of Japanese as valuing the humble, quiet type).
This doesn't just apply to the corporate world. As a blogger, each time I blog in an authoritative manner I find more people bending over backwards to hear what I've got to say (even when I'm talking total rubbish.)
I wonder how this relates to how we view karma on HN. Is higher karma meant to imply higher competence? The average karma per comment experiment from a few days ago seemed designed around that concept. Is karma just another way of making us feel more important or capable?
I see karma as a way to motivate more activity on the site. It turns participating into a game that you can win, which gets people's competitive juices flowing. We all love measuring ourselves against other people.
Let me be your first counterexample. I can't care less about the number attached to my account. You want to up mine? Be my guest.
Aside of this though, it is easy to get a high Karma/posts ratio. How to do it? If you know damn well what you're talking about every time you post, you will accrue lots of Karma from being informative. There are a few gurus here and they're easy to spot. They will have high Karma, whether they care or not.
Some, like me, who aren't biological data troves, are happy to expose their ignorance and ask stupid questions, and deal with occasional (and mysterious) downmods.
