new directions 2017

The second New Directions in the Psychology of Technology Research Conference was held at the University California, Berkeley in Berkeley on Nov. 3rd and 4th, 2017. The conference was co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, the National Science Foundation, and The Future of Life Institute.

conference organizers

Juliana Schroeder, University of California, Berkeley
Nathanael Fast, University of Southern California

Conference Organizing Committee

Meia Chita-Tegmark, Future of Life Institute
Gloria Mark, University of California Irvine
Steve Whittaker, University of California Santa Cruz

Speakers

Nick Epley, University of Chicago

Nicholas Epley is the John Templeton Keller Professor of Behavior Science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He studies social cognition—how thinking people think about other thinking people—to understand why smart people so routinely misunderstand each other. His research has appeared in more than two dozen empirical journals, has been featured by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Wired, and National Public Radio, among many others, and has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Templeton Foundation. He has been awarded the 2008 Theoretical Innovation Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the 2011 Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology from the American Psychological Association, and the 2015 Book Prize for the Promotion of Social and Personality Science. Epley was named a "professor to watch" by the Financial Times, one of the "World's Best 40 under 40 Business School Professors" by Poets and Quants, and one of the 100 Most Influential in Business Ethics in 2015 by Ethisphere. He is the author of Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want.

hyunsoo chang, google, former member of white house social & Behavioral sciences team

Hyunsoo Chang is a former member of the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team, and is currently affiliated with Google. Chang earned a degree in Economics and Political Science from Amherst College. Prior to working at the White House, he worked as a Senior Associate at ideas42. He specializes in the design and analysis of "nudges" with a focus in Consumer Finance and Retirement Security; he has further worked on the development of the Feedback payment card and application.

ADAM GAZZALEY, UC San Francisco

Adam Gazzaley, M.D., Ph.D. is Professor in Neurology, Physiology and Psychiatry at the UC San Francisco, and the Founder & Executive Director of Neuroscape, a translational neuroscience center engaged in technology development and scientific research of novel brain assessments and optimization tools. Gazzaley is co-founder and Chief Science Advisor of Akili Interactive Labs and JAZZ Venture Partners. He is a scientific advisor for over a dozen technology companies including Apple, GE, Magic Leap and The VOID. He has filed multiple patents, authored over 125 scientific articles, and delivered over 525 invited presentations around the world. He wrote and hosted the nationally-televised PBS special “The Distracted Mind with Dr. Adam Gazzaley”, and co-authored “The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World”, winner of the 2017 PROSE Award. Dr. Gazzaley has received many awards and honors, including the 2015 Society for Neuroscience – Science Educator Award.

Dan goldstein, Microsoft

Dan Goldstein works at the intersection of behavioral economics and computer science. Prior to joining Microsoft, Dan was a Principal Research Scientist at Yahoo Research and a marketing professor at London Business School. He received his Ph.D. at The University of Chicago and has taught and researched at Columbia, Harvard, Stanford and Max Planck Institute in Germany, where he was awarded the Otto Hahn Medal in 1997. His academic writings have appeared in journals from Science to Psychological Review. Goldstein is a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the UK’s Behavioral Insights Team (aka Britain’s “nudge unit”). He was elected President of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making for the year 2015-2016.

James Guszcza, Deloitte

Jim Guszcza is the US Chief Data Scientist of Deloitte Consulting, and a member of Deloitte’s Advanced Analytics and Modeling practice. Jim has extensive experience applying predictive analytics techniques in a variety of public and private sector domains. He has also spearheaded Deloitte’s use of behavioral nudge tactics to more effectively act on model indications and prompt behavior change. Guszcza is a former professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison business school, and he holds a Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Science from The University of Chicago. He is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society and on its board of directors.

Tristan harris, time well spent

Called the “closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience,” by The Atlantic magazine, Tristan Harris was previously a Design Ethicist at Google and left to lead Time Well Spent, a non-profit movement to align technology with our humanity. Time Well Spent aims to transform the race for attention by revealing how technology steers two billion people’s thoughts and choices, and by demonstrating how new incentives and design practices can transform our technology environment to align with our best interest. Harris holds several patents from his work at Apple, Wikia, Apture and Google. He graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Computer Science, focused on Human Computer Interaction, while dabbling in behavioral economics, social psychology, behavior change and habit formation in Professor BJ Fogg’s Stanford Persuasive Technology lab. He was rated #16 in Inc Magazine’s Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30 in 2009.

RAVI IYER, RANKER

Ravi Iyer occupies a unique space at the intersection of data science and moral psychology. He is the chief data scientist for Ranker, a crowdsourced list website that collects millions of monthly consumer opinions, and the executive director of Civil Politics, a non-profit that uses technology to bridge the divide between practitioners and researchers in moral psychology. He is an applied data science consultant for numerous organizations including Zenzi Communications and Carhub. He holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Southern California and remains an active researcher. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, South by Southwest, NPR, and the BBC, among other outlets. He is the co-founder of numerous academic social science projects that leverage technology to collect larger, more diverse datasets, including BeyondThePurchase.org, YourMorals.org, ExploringMyReligion.org, PsychWiki.com, and VoteHelp.org.

michal kosinski, stanford university

Michal Kosinski is a psychologist and data scientist. His research focuses on studying humans through the lens of digital footprints left behind while using digital platforms and devices. He is an Assistant Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Kosinski holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from University of Cambridge, an MPhil in Psychometrics, and a M.S. in Social Psychology. He coordinates the myPersonality project, which involves global collaboration between over 200 researchers, analyzing the detailed psycho-demographic profiles of over 8 million Facebook users. While at Cambridge University, he started an open-source online adaptive testing platform Concerto and the ApplyMagicSauce.com predictive engine. Previously, Kosinski was the Deputy Director of the University of Cambridge Psychometrics Centre, a researcher at Microsoft Research, and a post-doc at Stanford's Computer Science Department.

Cait Lamberton, university of pittsburgh

Cait Lamberton's research focuses on consumer behavior, from both an individual and socially-embedded perspective. Beginning with her dissertation work, Lamberton and her coauthors have researched the ways in which consumers respond to varying assortment sizes and organizations. She has also conducted research on consumers' own categorization tendencies, studying the ways in which they may be motivated to categorize items differently in the interest of their own restriction or indulgence goals. New research explores consumer behavior at an interpersonal and societal level. This work includes consideration of consumers' responses to online and offline social presence, decision-making in dyads, willingness to share products, the consequences of cooperation or competition, and satisfaction with contribution to the support of public goods.

Min Kyung Lee, Carnegie Mellon

Min Kyung Lee is a research scientist in human-computer interaction at the Center for Machine Learning and Health at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research examines the social and decision-making implications of intelligent systems and supports the development of more human-centered machine learning applications. Lee is a Siebel Scholar and has received several best paper awards, as well as an Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence. Her work has been featured in media outlets such as the New York Times, New Scientist, and CBS. She received a Ph.D. in HCI in 2013 and an MDes in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon, and a BS summa cum laude in Industrial Design from KAIST.

Paul Leonardi, uC Santa Barbara

Paul Leonardi is the Duca Family Professor of Technology Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also the Investment Group of Santa Barbara Founding Director of the Master of Technology Management Program. Leonardi’s research focuses on how companies can design their organizational networks and implement new technologies to more effectively create and share knowledge. He is particularly interested in how digital and data intensive technologies, such as simulation and social media tools, enable new ways to access, store, and share information; how the new sources of information these technologies provide can change work routines and communication partners; and how shifts in employees’ work and communication alter the nature of an organization's expertise.

Gloria Mark, uC Irvine

Gloria Mark’s research interest is in what is known as social computing: studying how individuals, groups, society and technology mutually influence each other. She is particularly interested in studying how information technology use affects multi-tasking, attention, mood, and above all, stress. Rather than bring people into a laboratory to study, she goes to where people are--the real world is a living laboratory. To study people and their technology use, she employs a method called precision tracking, which involves a combination of sensors, bio-sensors, experience sampling, surveys, and ethnographic techniques to gain a very detailed, comprehensive, and in-depth understanding of what people experience when they use computer technology. She also studies how people use social media and computer systems to be resilient during and after environmental crises.

Deirdre Mulligan, uC Berkeley

Deirdre K. Mulligan is an Associate Professor in the School of Information at UC Berkeley, a faculty Director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, and an affiliated faculty on the new Hewlett funded Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity. Mulligan’s research explores legal and technical means of protecting values such as privacy, freedom of expression, and fairness in emerging technical systems. Her book, Privacy on the Ground: Driving Corporate Behavior in the United States and Europe, a study of privacy practices in large corporations in five countries, was conducted with UC Berkeley Law Prof. Kenneth Bamberger and was published by MIT Press. She is a member of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Information Science and Technology advisory board; a member of the National Academy of Science Forum on Cyber Resilience; a Commissioner on the Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission; and a board member of the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Partnership on AI.

Iyad Rahwan, Massachusetts institute of technology

Iyad Rahwan is the AT&T Career Development Professor and an Associate Professor of Media Arts & Sciences at the MIT Media Lab, where he is director of the Scalable Cooperation group. A native of Aleppo, Syria, Rahwan holds a Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne, Australia. His work lies at the intersection of the computer and social sciences, with a focus on collective intelligence, large-scale cooperation, and the social science aspects of artificial intelligence. In 2012, Rahwan led the winning team in the US State Department’s Tag Challenge, using social media to locate individuals in remote cities within 12 hours using only their mug shots.

ryan ritter, facebook

Ryan Ritter is a social psychologist and quantitative UX researcher on the Protect and Care (PAC) team. Before joining Facebook, he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where his research focused generally on emotions, moral judgment, religious cognition, and mind perception. Now as a member of the PAC research team he analyzes log data, designs and analyzes exploratory and experimental surveys, and implements machine learning techniques to measure and understand the difficult experiences people have on Facebook. He works with fellow researchers, data scientists, product managers, designers, and engineers to translate research insights into products aimed to provide compassion and support.

Nancy Rothbard, university of Pennsylvania, The wharton school

Nancy Rothbard received her A.B. from Brown University and her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the University of Michigan. She is the David Pottruck Professor of Management and Chair, Management Department, at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Prior to joining the faculty at Wharton, she was on faculty at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University. Rothbard’s research focuses on the interplay between emotions and engagement in multiple roles. Specifically, she explores how people’s emotional responses to one role affect their subsequent engagement in another role.

Stuart russell, UC BERKELEY

Stuart Russell received his B.A. with first-class honours in physics from Oxford University in 1982 and his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford in 1986. His research covers a wide range of topics in artificial intelligence including machine learning, probabilistic reasoning, knowledge representation, planning, real-time decision making, multitarget tracking, computer vision, computational physiology, global seismic monitoring, and philosophical foundations. His books include "The Use of Knowledge in Analogy and Induction," "Do the Right Thing: Studies in Limited Rationality" (with Eric Wefald), and "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" (with Peter Norvig). His current concerns include the threat of autonomous weapons and the long-term future of artificial intelligence and its relation to humanity.

Maya Shankar, Google

Maya Shankar is the head of Behavioral Insights at Google. Previously, she served as a senior advisor in the Obama White House for four years, where she founded and served as chair of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST), a team of scientists charged with improving public policy using research insights about human behavior. In response to SBST’s impact, President Obama signed Executive Order 13707, “Using Behavioral Science Insights to Better Serve the American People,” which institutionalized SBST and codified the practice of applying behavioral science insights to federal policy. In 2016, Maya was asked to serve as the first behavioral science advisor to the United Nations. Previously, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroscience at Stanford. Maya holds a Ph.D. from Oxford, earned while on a Rhodes Scholarship, and a B.A. from Yale in cognitive science. She is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music precollege division and a former private violin student of Itzhak Perlman.

Steve whittaker, uC Santa cruz

Steve Whittaker works at the intersection of Psychology and Computer Science. He studies how technology is affecting fundamental aspects of our everyday lives, and use insights from Cognitive and Social Science to design new digital tools to support memory, emotion regulation and to help people manage personal information. He is the Editor of Human Computer Interaction, and have a Lifetime Research Achievement Award from ACM SIGCHI. He is the also a Fellow of the Association of Computational Machinery (ACM). His new book is The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff, from MIT Press, with Ofer Bergman.

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

The conference will took place on Friday November 3rd and Saturday November 4th, 2017.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3RD

8:00-8:45am: Breakfast, name tag pick up and registration

8:45-9am: Introduction [watch video]

9-10am: Trust 1: Ethical Technology Use

Nick Epley, University of Chicago [watch video]
Iyad Rahwan, MIT [watch video]

10-10:15am: Break

10:15-11:45am: Trust 2: Perceiving machines, algorithms, and AI

Min Lee, Carnegie Mellon University [watch video]
Stuart Russell, UC Berkeley [watch video]

11:45am-12pm: Discussion

12-1pm: Lunch

1-2:30pm: Trust 3: Tech use and design/policy implications

Tristan Harris, Time Well Spent [watch video]
Steve Whittaker, UC Santa Cruz [watch video]
Dierdre Mulligan, UC Berkeley [watch video]

2:30-3:15pm: Breakout groups

3:15-3:30: Break

3:30-4:30pm: Tech in the Workplace

Gloria Mark, UC Irvine [watch video]
Dan Goldstein, Microsoft

4:30-5:15pm: Data Blitz

David Newman, University of Southern California [watch video]
Karen Huang, Harvard Business School [watch video]
Kristen Duke, University of California, San Diego [watch video]
Li Huang, Hofstra University [watch video]
Noah Castelo, Columbia University [watch video]

6-8pm: Dinner

8-9:30pm: Socializing

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4TH

8:00-8:45am: Breakfast

8:45am-9am: Opening remarks

9-10am: Online Psychology

Cait Lamberton, University of Pittsburgh [watch video]
Nancy Rothbard, UPenn Wharton [watch video]