Theory of (hive)Mind and Troping

"Theory of Mind" is cognitive-science-speak for the talent people have for modeling what is going on in the heads of the other people in a collaboration. Some people are just better at reading between the lines and, importantly, are good at restating things so that the collaborators all understand each other better.

Here is a nice fresh article about a study that indicates very strongly that groups perform better, the more Theory of Mind (To M) application there is in a group.

So, why is this in Wiki Talk? Because it leads one to think that the workshops will be more effective if tropers make more use of emotional "signage" like emoticons; "mode" signals (like <Sarcasm Mode>, "Serious!Me"); even font styling like colors, italics, bold and so on, making an effort to fill in, in-between the lines.

That, and having high-ToM-talented tropers remember to state out loud just what it is they are reading between the lines, will help the group be more effective.

edited 19th Jan '15 8:20:44 AM by eyebones

So, in other words having a bit more "social" interaction that a mere text exchange by way of using markup effects improves the groupwork.

That's the theory.☺ It probably applies for troping in particular because the discussions tend toward having a lot of jargon and acronyms flying around. It is not just newbies who are sometimes left struggling to catch on.

The main thing, though, is to get away from mis-cued conversations. How many times have you seen someone ask for clarification about a post only to have the respondent go off on them as if their position is being attacked? In almost every case, a little emoticon work could have prevented the whole thing.

Well to a point that is already happening in various ways on the forum. Though to be fair to cover the full range of possible indicators requires a bit of extra work sometimes. Especially when choosing the right Emoji/Emoticon having to custom input them.

Sounds almost exactly like Freuds theory of the collective subconscious. Its the image of "the collective" inside the individual. Check up on "Theory of Mind", which is the inability or ability of the individual of know when "imagine inside the head" doesn't corresponds with other people anymore. Solipsism in philosophy is also related and so is aspergers syndrome and their opposite socially gifted sociopaths.

Isn't it just stereotyping or conformity?

How does this appear in fiction?

Besides, TV Tropes is a website intended to document tropes in media for the general public, not a place for fanboys and whatnot to hangout.

In other words, even if that theory is true, I don't think "emotional 'signage'" is what we should go for as that would alienate those who aren't part of the group (in other words, most of the general public).

This is why stuff like Just A Face And A Caption, Zero Context Examples, Word Cruft, etc. are banned here.

(*confused*) What??

(*cautious *) I think you misinterpreted what the discussion is...

(*confident *) The study itself compared the effectiveness of group intelligence at completing tasks by varying the parameters of in-person and emotional signaling. The groups that were in-person signaled emotions through body language. The groups communicating over a network were restricted to voice or textual messages. Some of whom were instructed to be explicit with their emotions. The groups who signaled their emotions in addition to their ideas were closer to the in-person group than the groups who were not explicitly instructed to do so.

(*cautious *) So it seems to me that the study is saying we will communicate more effectively if we share emotional information at the same time as factual information and our opinions. That would belong in the fora and edit reasons, not the wiki itself.

edited 5th Feb '15 5:12:01 AM by crazysamaritan

I see what you did there.

The gist of that is part of human communication is audible tone and visual cues from body language. The lack of the ability to have even vocal tone with any accuracy in text alone limits accuracy of communication. Using various forms of deliberate expression like indicating this is angry, exasperated, tired, happy etc adds additional tones of communication to text that is otherwise absent.

For example without indicating otherwise it can be difficult to tell if someone is making a sarcastic statement. A common work around I have seen is Sarcasm: <text here> /Sarcasm. It is part technology joke and part indication of what part of the persons written text is being sarcastic.

You get things SMH shaking my head, smiley's, LOL, Emoji's etc that also help convey additional information to some degree.

Crazy's above post is one example of that in a demonstrative form and it is a lot easier to pick up the intended tone and some of the thought behind the words.

edited 5th Feb '15 5:38:06 PM by TuefelHundenIV

There's quite a bit of Sarcasm Mode and Sincerity Mode used on the forums as potholes for whatever text fits the description, although the former is sometimes more properly just Snark Mode and probably should be rewritten to something less aggressive. Personally I, and a few others around, also use fake redlinks for the same purpose on occasion. And sometimes for humour. This particular style of clarification is probably a lot more unique to this site, considering the ease of potholing random words. It does require at least mouse-hovering, so it's not the best of systems, though.

Although I must also admit to taking advantage of the lack of emotional context in plain words to create an ambiguity of meaning if the situation doesn't require accuracy (such as, again, humour).

You right. I did sorta misinterpret it.

I'm not so sure about adding emotions to the wiki pages itself. While the wiki's supposed to be casual, I don't know if it's supposed to be that casual.

After all, as I said, the wiki's supposed to be documenting tropes to the general public. Emotional ques added to the article may interfere with that.

You're proposing that we communicate the emotions on the wiki itself, so can you give a list of positives/negatives instead of just saying it's a bad idea?

I'm not the OP.

Besides, I wasn't intending to do risk assessment. I was trying to give my opinion about this.

Heh, no. We are not adding emotion keywords to the wiki.

To the wiki no certainly not. The wiki doesn't need it. In various fora spaces including our workshops it might be handy at times.

edited 6th Feb '15 8:16:29 PM by TuefelHundenIV

That's what the OP had been suggesting. I'm trying to figure out why ~KarjamP proposes we should add it to the wiki while calling it a bad idea at the same time.

I was thinking more along the lines of the OP I sort of unintentionally glossed that other bit over. The OP was speaking of using it more in our workshops to aid in communication between folks operating on the forum.

I am not entirely sure how we would apply it to the wiki as whole as the format of the wiki and how we lay out the info does not lend itself to conversation in the first place. Well shouldn't really lend itself to conversation like structures I should say.

I think Karjam may have thought someone else brought up the notion of adding them to the wiki, perhaps because he's still slightly misinterpreting the OP.

I think you've misinterpreted my post, ~Crazy Samaritan - I never said I wanted to add this to the wiki. In fact, I'm actually leaning more against it (which is why I'm said that it's a bad idea in the first place).

edited 7th Feb '15 1:50:09 AM by KarjamP

I am going to state the obvious just to open my post: I do not speak for anyone else.

For me discussion have nothing to do with emotions, when I learned discussion techniques in civics and later in my meaningless life. I never involve emotions in discussions, never. There are no jokes in a good discussion, no "just joking", no fluff and no indirect unspoken meanings. If I discuss what the best movie is with a friend and he disagree, we both have emotions but we keep our poker face on and make our argument seem as "objective and rational as possible". "you liked movie A which is similar so you must LOVE move B" I use his emotions for movie B, but I don't talk emotional. "I did like movie B but not because of the similarities with A but because of favorite actor Z has big tits".

Discussions are not about the group arriving to a conclusion. Its a match between two sides and who has the nastiest sharpest argument wins because the goal is when the looser is stands with no good argument left except that he has some emotion or another.

edited 7th Feb '15 2:41:12 AM by klas.wullt

Discussions are not about the group arriving to a conclusion. Its a match between two sides and who has the nastiest sharpest argument wins because the goal is when the looser is stands with no good argument left except that he has some emotion or another.

That's more like what happens on a battlefield. You'll understand that we can't run a wiki like a war zone.

Besides, comparing a wiki to a discussion is like comparing apples to oranges^note yeah yeah, I know theres's similarities between apples and oranges, but I was speaking figuratively, not literally.

We're not supposed to be holding discussions on the wiki proper according to the rule "Conversation in the Main Page".

On discussion pages and in the forums, yes, but not the wiki proper. (I was talking about the wiki proper when I said I don't think this is a good idea and that I'm leaning against it, Crazy Samaritan, so don't take this as meaning I'm contradicting myself.)