Big Thinkers Sandy Pentland - “Honest Signals”
Professor Alex “Sandy” Pentland addressed a standing-room-only crowd at the Yahoo! Labs Mission College campus in Santa Clara on Wednesday to talk about “Honest Signals.” Attendees spilled into the aisles and chose to plant themselves on the floor when seats ran out to listen to the MIT professor. “All the things you do is predicated on what it means to be human,” Pentland said to start his hour-long talk to the attentive audience. “We assume that we (our actions) are all rational,” he said. “The truth is - that’s all BS.”
Pentland came to Yahoo! to discuss how there are patterns in behavior that can reveal important things about people like intentions, goals and values. Observing behavior and understanding these patterns can predict the outcomes of social situations such as negotiating salaries, dating, interviews and sales pitches. “Decisions made by the unconscious mind are actually better than the conscious mind,” said Pentland. Unconscious social signals form an entirely separate communication network. He defined this phenomenon as real science because of what the signals can reveal.
Unconscious social signals have a long history. Before language was introduced in society, Pentland explained that we hunted, reproduced, and fought in war. But throughout evolution, other modes of communication were built on top of older mechanisms, and this “older stuff” is just as important. These social signals, or honest signals, evolved in every social species, and Pentland cited an example using bees and their system of making honey and finding locations to set up hives. They make their decisions based on signals such as when bees find something interesting and good, more bees will go out. Eventually, every bee goes out and moves the entire hive – the decision based on signals and actions made by the entire group. This form of communication—based not on words but behavior—can profoundly influence the decisions that people make in their lives.
Pentland presented the scientific background necessary for understanding this form of communication. He showed examples of group behavior in real organizations and how by observing and understanding various social networks, people can become more successful in job interviews, negotiating their salaries, dating situations or pitching business ideas.
Pentland has conducted experiments by using tiny smartphone devices to collect data about the how people in organizations interact, allowing him to observe the interactions and patterns of populations in a community. The value isn’t in producing a verbal record of a conversation but rather quantifiable information about more subtle cues like tone and physical activity.
Pentland also spent time discussing privacy issues and the enormous power of the data – and the risk that companies run if it is misused.
Pentland concluded his talk by discussing the enormous opportunity that honest signals present in research and business development. His is currently involved in a project that fosters an entrepreneurial mobile phone developer community within Africa, and also oversees an organization that was established to support aspiring entrepreneurs in emerging markets.
