"1337 or n00b, sit!"-my new project revealed

Posted by Jhon on June 15, 2008 at 10:14pm in General Discussions

Hello mix maniacs! Jhon here, i haven't posted anything in ages, so here I am, after months of MIX nothingness, I come back to you with a new idea, an experiment i want to try.

In my previous post ( RE:Do Vegans/Vegetarians realize plants are alive just like animals are alive?) i talked about me being in a Biotechnology program in college, which is not true anymore. I switched to a Social Science program, in order to go into Psychology in 2009.

So, yeah, my objective of understanding human being hasn't change, although, the way i'm gonna do it has.

Im a gamer, and often i hear the terms noob and 1337 (leet=elite). Shopping at the mall with a friend last week, i had this idea of experimenting how well known those terms are by my generation. Gamer or not, do they know what it means? I had this idea of puting some kind of signs or mark on a bench with the word "noob" and "1337" written on. I'd place on one side the noob sign, in the middle the 1337 sign, and on the other side another noob one. which would seperate the bench in three part, making the middle part the 1337 sitting place.

But I had second thoughts about it. Maybe i needed to replace 1337 for another term. I'm not quite sure which word i'm gonna use yet, but I'll think about it.

So why do i do this? Cause i want to see human behavior facing the choice of sitting on the noob ot the 1337 places. I'll obviously video record the whole thing.

The reason I'm posting this is to know what do you think will happen and why? for exemple, i think no one will care cause they are too busy, or i think they will care and maybe have a little fight about where everyone sit, and therefore see who has more power over the others,...,.

I'll register your hypothesis in my files, and see who was the closest to the final result. While i put the final touch to my experiment, feel free to ask me question or suggest method on how to do it. I'll edit this post regurlarly to keep you updated on this.

Tags: experiment, psychology, social, video

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by salim dao on June 15, 2008 at 10:48pm: well, i think the n00b bench will get more hits. n00b is more commonplace in conversations than 1337. i hear it more in conversations and read it more on forums. but people can choose which bench to sit on depending on their relationship with the term. person a can be like "oh i know the word n00b. i dont know what 1337 is though. i'll sit on the n00b bench." person b can be like "hey im no n00b, but whats 1337? i'd better sit on the 1337 bench so no one thinks im a n00b."; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Alex V. on June 16, 2008 at 6:46am: That's a great idea. It'd be interesting to see the results.

I think you should have a 1337 bench and a n00b bench. Or maybe you could use l33t and n00b. If nobody knows what the words mean, then statistically the distribution should be around 50% on each bench. If some people know what they mean and take that into account, then more people should sit on the 1337 bench.

However, I think that would work only if both benches are free, and a person has only the two words to consider, because if one bench is full for example, then there is no longer any choice. So you may want to consider that when interpreting the results. Also, as a control you could measure the distribution with no signs one week before the experiment (so it's the same day of the week thus eliminating another variable).

In any case, good luck and all the best.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Matt Dreams on June 17, 2008 at 6:07pm: hmmm.... interesting proposition.

Too hard to control in the wild though. Esp. with benches.
Try this, if you can. 2 doors... (or, like most mall entrances, a group of double doors.) Designate each with "n00b entrance" and "L337 entrance." that way the test subjects don't have to consider having their natural flow interrupted to participate. as they approach and are forced to choose a door, perhaps they'll consciously or subconsciously gravitate toward their chosen status. also, the presence of a subject on the bench would prevent others from immediately participating. with the doors, the subjects would, again, just flow.

also, as there are usually at least three sets of doors at even my tiny excuse for a mall, you could designate the third set of doors "all others enter here." this would help to determine the percentage of subjects who are actually familiar with the terms.

wow. to perform a social experiment of this size would take a group of researchers. someone with a counter for each door (3), possibly another to count total subjects (unless you wanted to rely on adding the three results), and also someone to run the camera.

I'd love to try this here in McComb, MS. Anyone else want to volunteer to conduct this experiment? Then we could tell Mall Security that we were each volunteer research teams conducting a nationwide "status response" survey... or something like that. And Jhon could get a much better data sample to draw his conclusions from. I've got a video camera on the way as a birthday present from my mom and I could easily convince a few friends to spend a day testing this out.

I know the point of starting the discussion was to solicit hypotheses, but I'm so intrigued by the nature of the experiment that I couldn't even begin to formulate any right now.

Great idea, though!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jhon on June 28, 2008 at 11:44pm: Update on my project:

Here in Quebec, everyone moves out on the 1st of july, well almost everyone who rent an appartment.
For that reason, i had to choose either to start the project early with little preparation or wait till mid july to do it. Seconde option was best, because, i want to know if i have to get some kind of authorization to run this experiment at the mall since its one of the biggest in eastern canada :P

So far i didnt make up my mind on the terms to employ on the bench. noob and l33t seemed good choice at the beginning, but i want to reach as much people as possible, so that i can extract some interesting stats.

i had an idea about leaders and workers, something in that area, i want to know if that could work or if you could think of something better ^^

i personnaly want this to work, cause maybe i can use it as a plus to my application to go to university lol i don't know, it's kinda late over here, so let me know what you all think about this!

cya!

PS: i do know it changes the primary goal of the experiment but i had to, so the experiment does actually mean something, maybe ill go back to that first idea if the experiment works with the second idea.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Matt Gowdy on June 29, 2008 at 12:39am: This is just my opinion, but with benches, how often do people honestly read and react to the writing on what they are sitting on? Unless of course they know it's an experiment, which then brings up the "which one of these is not like the other one" concept and most people would end up sitting in the middle regardless of if they knew what the word was or not. Plus a bench creates physical parameters which can distort the results because a person sitting in the middle pushes someone else to the side or perhaps someone has a baby carriage or something and sits on one side because it's easier.

For an experiment like this, I think the terms are fine, you just have to get a method to get actual results form people. Filming benches is a great hoot when you watch it and you know what's going on, but in order to get a better set of results, you may need to interface with people, either setting up an experiment where they are forced to interact with the words to make a decision, not simply showing the words to them arbitrarily. Interviews, questionnaires, various other forms of polling can do that, but you could also be creative and do something like "pick one card or the other to get a prize" and see how people pick, whether it be randomly or on purpose, and ask them at the end if they knew (and how). Film everything and tally the results.

Again, just my 2 cents.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Alex V. on June 29, 2008 at 4:34pm: How about this: a study to investigate how different things subconsciously influence our decision making. For example, colour. Let's say you have to choose between two cubes. One is white and the other is red. Statistically, it should be about 50% for each cube. But if colour influences decision making, one should have a higher percent than the other. I have no idea if that's the case, but it would be interesting to find out if does, and to what degree.; ▶ Reply to This