The Neuroscience and Psychology of Open Source Communities
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Ruby Conference 20167 / 67
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00:00
Open sourceSoftware developerInheritance (object-oriented programming)Multiplication signType theory2 (number)Degree (graph theory)Open sourceComputer animationEngineering drawingPanel painting
01:28
Group actionLocal GroupCollaborationismFeedbackTerm (mathematics)Read-only memoryComputer networkOpen sourceCodeOpen setConnectivity (graph theory)Right angleArtificial neural networkFeedbackMultiplication signNegative numberExistential quantificationCompass (drafting)Position operator1 (number)2 (number)Semiconductor memorySound effectPattern languageProcess (computing)CASE <Informatik>Game theoryWeightSurvival analysisBitProjective planeField (computer science)SoftwareObservational studyGoodness of fitPiGroup actionNatural numberPlanningWordRational numberContext awarenessPanel paintingComputer animation
07:42
Process (computing)Web 2.0Multiplication signWindowGoodness of fitRight angleSoftwareWeb page
08:33
Fundamental theorem of algebraSystem programmingSoftwareMathematical analysisDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Shift operatorProcess (computing)WindowRight anglePerfect groupComputer animation
09:34
System programmingFocus (optics)InformationFilter <Informatik>Normal (geometry)Sensitivity analysisDegree (graph theory)Bridging (networking)Sensitivity analysisRight angleDot productMultiplication signObservational studyMereologyInheritance (object-oriented programming)Food energySpectrum (functional analysis)FacebookComputer scienceContext awarenessProcess (computing)ResultantBitComplete metric spaceEvent horizonTwitterLine (geometry)Negative numberSoftwareKey (cryptography)Link (knot theory)Online helpNumberRoundness (object)Grand Unified TheoryBootingProduct (business)CASE <Informatik>Sound effectVideoconferencingCodeOpen sourcePoint (geometry)Computer configurationGroup actionWritingComputer animation
18:57
Sensitivity analysisLocal GroupBootingInformationProcess (computing)MereologyGroup actionInclusion mapMathematicsNormal (geometry)Domain nameFinitary relationData structureSign (mathematics)Digital electronicsStress (mechanics)Level (video gaming)Open sourceGroup actionFormal languageRight angleBookmark (World Wide Web)Line (geometry)WindowFamilyContext awarenessMereologyInheritance (object-oriented programming)Moment (mathematics)Online helpProduct (business)Domain nameTheory of relativityInformationIdentity managementSpectrum (functional analysis)Sound effectBitTwitterInclusion mapRule of inferenceSoftwareSensitivity analysisExtension (kinesiology)Goodness of fitPattern recognitionScaling (geometry)Level (video gaming)Projective planeDifferent (Kate Ryan album)CodeArmThermal conductivityPhysical systemExpected valueMathematicsHydraulic jumpOpen setPlanning2 (number)Computer animation
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Event horizonControl flowAxiom of choiceSystem identificationLocal GroupSound effectCollaborationismRegular graphBoundary value problemGame theoryRule of inferenceTelecommunicationRight angleMereologyGame controllerGroup actionDot productNumberReal numberGame theoryLine (geometry)Boss CorporationObject-oriented programmingVideo gameOpen sourceLimit (category theory)Level (video gaming)Internet forumRule of inferenceBitQuicksortFormal languageElement (mathematics)Traffic reportingScaling (geometry)TelecommunicationRegular graphMultiplication signDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Projective planePhysical lawData conversionCycle (graph theory)Process (computing)Context awarenessSoftware maintenanceNP-hardSound effectDegree (graph theory)OnlinecommunityDisk read-and-write headField (computer science)Perspective (visual)Inheritance (object-oriented programming)Existential quantificationForm (programming)Equaliser (mathematics)CollaborationismComputer animation
37:42
Local GroupFaktorenanalyseOpen sourceOpen sourceDivisorReading (process)Multiplication signProjective planeNegative numberGroup actionBitControl flowWeb pageSlide ruleSingle-precision floating-point formatTwitterComputer animation
39:45
Coma BerenicesXML
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:01
If you don't know me, then come say hi to me.
00:22
Just a quick 30-second bio for people who don't know me. I've been in open source a really long time, since 2002, because I'm really old. I was a PHP developer for a long time, and then about six years ago, I switched over to the more community side of things. I pivoted my career a little, and now I work at GitHub.
00:44
I've been at GitHub about four years, doing community-ish type things there. I do live in Cincinnati. If you need any recommendations for awesome places to eat or see or do, you probably want to ask someone else, because I live in the suburbs, and I never come downtown, so I'm like, oh, it's cool down here.
01:02
We were excited to come out last night and have dinner downtown. I was like, oh, yeah, I feel like a tourist in my own town. Yeah, so I got my degree in organizational behavior, and I find the behavioral science side of open source super fascinating, which is why I'm giving this talk.
01:20
I kind of geek out on this stuff, so my apologies in advance for my excitement. So let's get started. If we were going to say, what makes open source open? Can you guys see this okay? I was kind of a little worried about the white text on black, but sorry. So there's basically two components, right? There's people and code.
01:40
Those are the kind of things that come together to make open source, and obviously, a lot of talks at RubyConf are about code, so this one's just going to be about people. All right. So if you were going to define how people make open source software, I think this is a pretty good definition. Individuals working in groups, collaborating together online.
02:02
So what we want to do is kind of take this definition and break it down into these different layers. So we have individuals who are working in groups, and they're collaborating together, and they're doing it all online. So if we just start with that first layer there of the individual,
02:23
like just you, me, our individual things, if we look at Wikipedia, it tells us that there are no less than 107 different ways in which we act completely, utterly irrationally. So 107 different ways. That's a lot of ways. That's a lot of ways.
02:40
And we always think like we're the ones being rational, right? We're the logical ones. Turns out that's not true. Like we're never rational, right? Like very rarely are we super rational. And this is even above and beyond like the unconscious biases you may have heard of, like sexism, racism, all of those isms. This is above and beyond all of that.
03:01
So we're not going to talk about all 107 of them because we would be here a really long time, and you all would be super bored. So I'm just going to pick a few that I've seen in my 14 years of just kind of observing open source, things that I kind of see like patterns. So hopefully kind of demystify some of these things,
03:21
maybe explain why people act the way they do. My goal here is to kind of allow you to empathize a little and maybe recognize some of these biases in yourselves. Oh, sorry. So let's start with the first one. It's the negativity bias. So this is the bias that I see a lot. And it basically says that as human beings in general,
03:43
we're going to place more importance on negative experiences and feedback. We give them more weight than we do the positive ones. And behavioral scientists trace this back to survival times, right? Like if your cousin eats a plant that kills him, you probably don't want to do that, right?
04:01
So we will remember that. We will remember not to eat that plant, and that will be very important to us in our brains. But, you know, if you eat a plant, it doesn't kill you. Ah, all right. That's cool. But we really want to make sure we don't eat that one that's going to kill us. So we place a lot, lot, lot of importance on the negative feedback that we get.
04:24
They register quicker in our brains. Like we know if something's bad immediately. It takes us a few seconds to figure out if something is good or not. And it doesn't seem like a big deal, but it actually really is when we're just bombarded by stimulus all day long. So when we have a negative experience,
04:42
it also goes immediately into our long-term memory. But when we have a positive one, you need about like 15 to 30 seconds to really like appreciate that this is a positive thing that's happening, and then it will register in our long-term memory. They have a greater impact on us, negative experiences.
05:00
So if I give you 20 bucks, you're going to feel pretty good. But if you then lose that $20, you will feel worse than you did before you got it. It's not like an even zero-sum game, right? Like you're going to feel way worse. So it's just an interesting kind of phenomenon how that is.
05:20
Like you would think that, oh, I had it and I lost it. Oh, well, no big deal. But no, that's not actually the case. That's not how things work. They have an adverse effect more than two times of our positive experiences. So every time you have a negative experience or someone in your open source project has a negative experience, then you're going to need to have at least two more positive experiences
05:43
before it's kind of an even playing field. We also learn faster from negative experiences, like all these behavioral science research studies. Like that's how you're going to learn, like the carrot and the stick. The stick teaches you much faster than a carrot does.
06:01
It's probably not the healthiest way to learn and provide feedback, but they will learn. People will learn very fast what not to do and when things are bad. So take that for what it is, you know? How many people in here participate in or are managing an open source project?
06:20
A few of you. Okay. So some of this stuff applies at work too or at home, like wherever. It's just human behavior. So it's applicable to open source, but also just in your everyday lives. I think this is interesting. We have five times the neural networks dedicated to negative affect over positive affect. So negative affect are things like fear, grief, sadness, shame, guilt,
06:45
all those icky things that we feel. Positive affect is joy, comfort, kindness, compassion, laughter, all those things. So we have five times the neural networks. So we're constantly scanning for threats, right?
07:02
Like that's what our brain does, just constantly scanning for threats, scanning for things that are going to harm us. We spend a lot of time analyzing, worrying, processing negative feedback, way more, five times more than we do positive ones, which I find really interesting. It's like if you're aware of that, you can kind of mitigate it a little bit.
07:22
It's like you can snap. You realize what's happening. You snap out of it a little bit easier, that it's not your fault. It's just like human nature. We also have more words to describe negative things than we do positive things, which I find also very interesting.
07:42
Let's see. So when you look at this picture, what do you see? Shout it out. A broken window? Yeah, a broken window. And I want to also ask how many people in here would consider themselves problem solvers? Like do you consider yourself like a good problem solver? Most people in this room would consider themselves a problem solver.
08:01
So the interesting thing about problem solvers is when you're a problem solver, you're always on the lookout for problems to solve. And when you're doing that all day, because that's your job and that's what you feel like your role is, and all your friends are doing it all day, it kind of carries through, right? So you're constantly scanning for problems to solve.
08:20
You're going to be the one person that's going to find, out of this web page, you're going to find the thing that's wrong and the thing that's shitty, and then everything's shitty, right? Like it's all just terrible. Software's terrible. We hate it. Right? We see that all the time. But I think this is a really interesting quote here. It says the fundamental difference between creating and problem solving is simple. In problem solving, we seek to make something we don't like go away.
08:44
But in creating, we seek to make what we truly care about exist. So it's just kind of a subtle shift in the way we perceive our own jobs and what we are here to do and what our software is here to do. So if you go back and you maybe reassess kind of your initial analysis of this picture,
09:04
you might also say that this is an almost perfect window, right? There's only one pane that's broken. Think the rest. Maybe that one in the left-hand corner. I can't really tell if that's broken or not, but most of the panes are fine. There's just one small pane that needs to be replaced, and then the window's perfect, right?
09:20
So it's just a subtle shift in the way we think and the way we look at the world as creating something that I want to create a beautiful, perfect window, not this shitty broken window. I don't want to look at this anymore. I'm just going to have to just smash them all. I don't know. Okay, so enough negativity bias. That's a lot. I know, I'm sorry.
09:41
I love how I like kick off the awesome talk with like all this wah-wah. Sorry. I should have put that at the end, I guess. But the next one we're going to talk about is Dunning-Kruger. Who's heard of this before? A few people, right. So essentially what this and its other side is imposter syndrome, which you probably have all heard of because we talk about that a lot in software.
10:03
It's basically just that we are not very good at judging our own expertise and like how we are relative to others. And I didn't see Brandon Hayes' talk yesterday, but I heard that that was kind of like the whole key to that is just kind of like defining where you fit. So I think that's super, super helpful because otherwise we just don't know.
10:23
And it's really frustrating to be on the receiving end of someone who has Dunning-Kruger or even someone who has imposter syndrome. That is an awesome contributor, but doesn't maybe feel confident enough. Like that's a shame. So I just want to challenge you to maybe look at your own expertise
10:42
a little more objectively for good and bad. Like I don't know where you fall on this spectrum, but for good and bad, maybe just take a look at how you are and what your skills are. The next one we're going to talk about is confirmation bias. Awesome, right. Like all you have to do is just go to Facebook.
11:02
Like I should have just replaced this with just Facebook or Twitter. Because for the most part you already know what an article is going to say based on who's tweeting the link. You already know what it's going to say for the most part, right. Because what happens is when these two pieces of our brain are acting in conjunction with each other,
11:21
that's when confirmation bias sits in and we just filter out anything that doesn't jive, anything that doesn't jive with what we feel and what we know to be true. In research they have to be very careful about this because you kind of expect to know what the results are going to be and you can't allow any of your own confirmation bias to be a part of that.
11:44
And it's really interesting that this piece, when something is very wrong, like shit's happening in your brain. We feel like it's in our gut, but it's really in our brain. So it's like you're not crazy, it's actually something that's going on. And then when we have all these stimulus all day long,
12:04
like we have this big piece of our brain that's helping us filter what's important and what isn't and what we should pay attention to and what we shouldn't. So when those two things come together, that's when we have confirmation bias. And I think what's also interesting is that confirmation bias really plays into this, right.
12:22
If we think that we're an imposter, like we think we suck, we're going to just see the things that reinforce why we think we suck. So if you help mitigate your own confirmation bias and try to just look at things a little bit more objectively, then that will also help with this problem as well.
12:44
Okay, let's talk about illusion of transparency. Has anybody heard of this before? One guy in the back, yes. So basically it's just saying that we overestimate the ability for others to know what we're thinking. We think everybody knows. Like why don't you know what I mean?
13:01
Why do I need to document this stuff? Like you should know what I meant here, the code speaks for itself, right. But that's not true. That's not true because we lack the context that's in your brain. Like I'm not a mind reader, I don't know. And if you leave me the option to connect the dots, I'm going to connect them in my own way, not necessarily in the way that you mean for me to connect them.
13:23
Does that make sense? Right, this is why I have a whole other talk, a whole other talk on documentation and why it's so very important because I know like we're lazy, like we don't want to write shit down, but it's super, super important because even for your future self, like you need to just write things down because people don't know what you're thinking,
13:41
they don't know what your situation was at the time. And it's interesting that they did a study, a few studies actually, where they would tell one person to think of a song and then tap it out, and then they would have the other person guess what song it was. Right, seems simple enough. And what happens is we estimate like 95%, we think, yeah,
14:02
95% of the time people are going to get this song, it's clear what the song is, and they only get it like a very, very small percentage of the time because it's like there's zero context around that. Does that make sense? The curse of knowledge, anybody heard about this? The curse of knowledge?
14:21
Gail has, she's smart, I just love her. So the curse of knowledge says the more that we learn, the harder it is for us to empathize with beginners, which part of my job at GitHub is to, I run the patchwork events, which are events for beginners to get GitHub and open source. And so it's very interesting to me when I see mentors
14:41
because it's like a mentor-driven thing, and it's really eye-opening for mentors to kind of put themselves back in a beginner's shoe. The way this kind of came about was actually in economics. They were doing a study around salespeople and why the most knowledgeable salespeople weren't selling the most product.
15:02
Like you would think, oh, the more you know, then you're the expert, like you're going to sell a ton. But that's not actually the case because they're so far ahead, they can't remember what it was like to not know things. Also, I want to just ask you guys, so who in here learned to code or learned to do their job
15:23
from a traditional four-year college, like computer science or whatever? Okay, a handful. Anyone in here do a boot camp? Somebody, a few people. Who in here is self-taught? That was me. Awesome. And then how many people learn by reading books?
15:40
A few, okay, about half. And then anybody learn by watching videos sometimes? Okay, so my point is if you think about all of the different ways that we can learn to code and learn to do our jobs, there is no one path, right? Like we're all over the place, and what we're learning is just based on whatever this person who's teaching us knows and whatever they think.
16:03
Like it's going through their filter as well. So there are thousands of gaps in our collective knowledge. So when we mock someone who doesn't know something or we get angry or we lose patience with someone who we think should know it,
16:22
maybe just take a step back and realize, well, you know, I learned that in boot camp, but maybe they aren't teaching that in a computer science degree, or maybe this person just didn't read that because they're self-taught and they just need a little like bridge for their knowledge. It's much better to share your knowledge than get upset because someone doesn't know because we're coming from so many different places,
16:42
so many different backgrounds all over the place. So here's another one. False consensus effect. So basically we overestimate that everyone thinks that we're right. Like we're right. Everyone knows it. Like, you know, I'm in the common group,
17:02
but that's actually not true because we're super diverse and what you think may not be what everyone else thinks. So don't fall into that trap. I just got a little shot of the super fruit infusion. This shit's awesome. I love it. It's like energy refreshed.
17:22
Okay, let's talk about rejection sensitivity. So this is a thing that gets me excited. I don't know why, but it does. So this basically explains the fact that your sensitivity to social rejection is a spectrum, right? So we have some people on this end who have no sensitivity to rejection.
17:43
Like they do not give a F. Like they are just, they don't care. And as a result, I mean, in a way that's kind of cool because they're just doing their thing, but also like you need a little bit of sensitivity to rejection to just fit in socially and to not like be a complete asshole, right?
18:00
So you have these people on this end and then you have people on the other end who are just like 100% sensitive to every single thing that is said and they take it as a personal affront. Even like just having to stand in line. Like they will get offended because they have to stand in line. Or like this asshole out in California who killed a woman
18:21
because she wouldn't give him her phone number. So that's like way off the charts as well. So most of us are somewhere in the middle. You know, we fall in here mostly. But what's interesting is that you don't fall in the same place as someone else.
18:40
So when we tell someone, oh, you're just being too sensitive, right? Like that's actually not fair because it's a little bit more complicated than that. And scientists honestly don't know if it's because of experiences, if it's a learned thing or if it's just, you know, when you're born, if that's like where you fall. It's like telling someone who's an introvert, well, you just need to be more extroverted.
19:02
Like it's not that simple, right? It's a little more complicated than that. So just like be aware that someone's, you know, just because you're not on the scale and the same place as someone else, that doesn't mean they're wrong. They're just different than you. And we should allow for that. We should allow for that. The really interesting thing I think is that our brains,
19:22
they haven't shown that they don't know the difference between physical pain and rejection, social rejection, but they will say that the same parts of the brain become active. So we are feeling it. Like if you're rejected and you feel like you don't belong into the group, like you feel that in your brain in the same places
19:40
that you feel like if someone comes and punches you in the arm. Like it's a real thing. It's not a matter, it's a real thing. And our brain will release the same painkillers that it does, the same opioids go into our system to try to like make us feel better. Right? So it's really, really interesting. There are actual physical changes happening when you feel like you're being disrespected or misunderstood.
20:02
And we'll talk about that in a second. So yeah. So we're pretty complicated, right? Like I only touched on a handful of these things. Like there's 107 of these things. There's a lot going on. So we're complicated. We know this. So let's jump to working in groups.
20:22
Then things are going to get even more fun, right? Because we're now putting all of our messy shit together in a group. So that's pretty awesome. So let's talk about this in-group favoritism. So this is a thing that happens when we...
20:42
It's kind of along the same lines as tribalism, which I'll talk about in a second. But when we find our people and that's awesome and you feel like you belong and it's great, but it can also be a little bit dangerous if you are taking your group and elevating them above other groups. Like that's not good. And I think there's been some talk
21:03
about this kind of culture of contempt that we have in open source. And just in general in tech, I think. Like there's a huge, you know, Apple versus Windows versus like... You know, and my personal feeling is who gives a fuck? Like no one cares. Why in the world should I care
21:22
what kind of phone you have? Like it literally affects me this much. Zero percent. What kind of phone you choose to use? What kind of language you choose to write in? Like most of you write Ruby. I wrote PHP. It doesn't matter. Like I just want people... Some people use GitHub. Some people use GitLab. Whatever. I just want you to find the tools that work for you and make awesome shit.
21:41
Like that's all I care about is that you're happy and you're using something that you like. That's all that should matter. Right? So we should be a little bit aware of this. And what happens is then, you know, then there's this like us versus them and all this bullshit. When it's like we're all just trying to make awesome, cool things with open source.
22:01
This is kind of interesting too. When we see someone that's in our group, there's like a part of our brain that will process information about them, like how we feel about them and things. When we see someone who is definitely not in our group, it's a whole other side of our brain that we're using, which is very curious to me. And this kind of also goes into
22:22
with the tribalism as well. It's like we completely put our whole identity into whatever tool, whatever it is. So therefore, like if someone, you know, if someone says something bad about like Vim versus Emacs or whatever, like we're gonna, like that's our identity. No, you know, we're gonna have a rumble.
22:42
I don't know. So it's just something to be aware of and something to try to mitigate against because we're all doing the same thing. We all want the same things. Who cares? Whatever. This is interesting too. Feeling understood is a huge deal for us, more so than you probably thought.
23:03
And there's a whole awesome book, which I think I linked to at the end, called The Science of Respect and how important feeling understood and respected is to us. It's extremely important. And when we feel misunderstood, then that negative affect just kicks right in,
23:21
that piece of our brain. So it's a big deal. And of course then, it's moderated by our sensitivity to rejection, which they found was interesting. So wherever you feel on that spectrum, wherever you fall, that's also gonna kind of dictate how you feel about being misunderstood.
23:40
And for some people, it's a little bit more important than others. Same thing with belonging. Like we really, really, really want to belong. Scientists again, you know, back to the caveman days, you did better together than you did alone. And this is the whole thing of open source, right? Like we all want to belong to something. We all want to make it better together.
24:02
So, not to throw the GitHub thing in there, but that was our little tagline, better together. But yeah, like we really do. We really want to belong. So it's complicated. It's really complicated when you put everybody in groups. So now let's actually have our group do something. We're not just hanging out.
24:20
We're not just social, you know, whatever, chilling. It's already complicated. But now we're gonna actually try to write some software, produce something. So we're gonna look at this really quick. Who's heard of SCARF, anybody? Probably, eh, maybe not, okay. So SCARF is gonna help us understand what motivates people in certain groups.
24:41
And then it's the extent to which people feel threatened or rewarded. So like what's gonna motivate them in the group? Or demotivate them to participate? Sorry, I'm gonna scratch. So here's the five domains of SCARF. Status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness.
25:01
And these are the things like, these are the buckets that people fall in of what's important to them. So status of course is like where they fall in relation. So it's like acknowledgement, recognition, status. Like for some people that's super important. Like they don't care about the money, right? Open source, like none of us really care about the money. But you know, they just want to be recognized.
25:21
They want to feel important in the group. And that's really important to them. And this is actually at a subconscious level. Like we're not even aware of it. Of how deep it goes. Certainty. People, some people for this is so important. Like they don't want any ambiguity.
25:43
Any ambiguity is going to be like a perceived threat to them. Which is why for some people it's really important for documentation. How do I contribute to this project? What am I supposed to do? Just tell me what I'm supposed to do. What are the rules here? What are the ground rules? What's your code of conduct? These things are important to me that I know.
26:02
That I know what I'm supposed to do here. What are the expectations? And when we have, for these people, when they have more certainty, it's like a reward. Okay, alright. So I'm kind of one of these people. I'm like in the middle. So like I dragged my family to the Grand Canyon over the summer.
26:21
We have three kids. Teenagers. So they were super excited. Not really. But I made them come anyway. And I literally planned every minute of every day. And it was jam packed. It was awesome. It was like a super Clark Griswold moment. But I didn't care. It was amazing. And I was talking to Leon Gersing.
26:42
You guys probably know that name. And Leon is like completely the other way. He's just like let's just get in a car and just go. So he like took his kids across country. For seven weeks or something. Nothing planned. Ah, when we're tired we'll just find a hotel. It's no big deal. And I could just feel, like as he's telling me this story, I could just like feel like my anxiety just like what are you in?
27:03
Why would you do that? Like oh my goodness. But for some people certainty is really, really important. So just keep that in mind. It may not be important to you. But for someone else it might be. So if you allow for that in your open source, if you acknowledge that oh okay, then that's really going to help you gain contributors,
27:20
make people feel better about contributing or using your product. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. And then for, yeah, the threat, people see it as a threat. Like I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't like that. So I'm immediately on alert, right? Because my brain's scanning all the time for high alert.
27:41
And then of course ambiguous social situations. I'm sure some of you maybe in here feel that when you come to conferences. I know I do. It's like it's really stressful if you don't know anyone. Like I'm a PHP person. And my husband was a Rubyist. That's his Twitter is Rubyist. But you know, and I know a few local people. But like I don't know very many people.
28:01
So for coming here was super stressful for me. Because I thought oh gosh, I don't know anyone. You know, where are we going to sit at lunch? Like all of that stuff. All of that stuff. So anything you can do to kind of mitigate that for other people is really helpful. It makes for a much more inclusive community. Autonomy. Autonomy is a big deal, right?
28:21
Especially I think in open source. Like we just want to be able to just do our shit. Like I don't want to have to ask permission. I just want to have control over something. Control over something. And if these people have those, have that sense of autonomy. They will have better wellbeing.
28:40
They'll be healthier. It's amazing the difference for these people. If they are stuck in a powerless and a control, no control situation, that is not going to be good for them. That's not going to be good for them. So as an open source contributor, or an open source project maintainer, you have
29:01
to acknowledge the fact that some people really want to help you, but they need to be able to do it. Right? So you can't control everything. That's a little bit hard. And then finally relatedness. Like we just want to belong. We want to be part of something. We want to join this community. We want to be part of something. And for some people, they don't even care what it is.
29:22
They just want to feel like they belong and that they're a part of what's going on. And then finally the F in SCARF is the perceived level of equality across outcomes. So this is a little bit tricky, actually, because it seems like what's fair is obvious.
29:40
Right? What's fair? But it turns out that the idea of something being fair is a completely emotional thing. It's not a rational thing. So some people could say, well, it's not fair that underrepresented groups get all this extra attention, and maybe they get a scholarship and I don't. That's not fair.
30:01
But if you're a part of those underrepresented groups, you might say, it's not fair that we haven't had access to this technology. We haven't been included. We're here. We want to be seen. So by maybe giving a scholarship to an underrepresented group member, then now it's fair. So there are varying degrees of what's fair and what's not fair.
30:23
So we just need to be aware of that. Like what you think is fair and you think is rational and clear, there are other perspectives around this idea of fairness. And when something is unfair, that's a big deal in our brains. It's like feeling misunderstood.
30:41
Something's not fair if we're misunderstood. Those are two really big hot buttons for us, whether you knew it or not. So, hey, collaborating. It's a complicated thing. You see where I'm going with all this, right? It's getting increasingly more complicated as we go down the line.
31:01
Yeah, you guys are with me. All right. So let's talk about all of this shit that we've just been saying for our individuals. Then we'll throw them together in groups. Now we're going to make them try to do stuff. Oh, and now let's just put it all online because that's so much easier, right? In a way it is. It's certainly open to geographical – it takes the geographical limitations away.
31:25
But it also makes things a little bit harder. So let's look at this really quick. Has anyone seen this online community membership lifecycle? So once you see it, you're kind of like, oh, yeah, I get that. Yeah, I see that. Someone actually took it and wrote it out.
31:42
I want you to kind of just think about where you fall on this scale. So the first one is the peripheral. So they're like the lurkers. They're not quite in the community. They're not quite contributing yet. But they're just watching to see how things go. The next one is the inbound. So maybe they've submitted their first poll request or maybe they've commented on something.
32:02
They're just starting to participate. The third is the regulars. They're there all the time. They show up. They probably come into conferences. Maybe they're starting to go to user groups. But they're regular faces. We all know them. And then you have the leaders who have been around a long time and they just, for whatever reason, have kind of risen to the top
32:23
or are very well respected in the industry. And then you have kind of the elders, which I don't really like that because I'm probably an elder in PHP anyway. It's like, ugh, I'm only 45. I'm not that old. But yeah, so they're kind of like still there but just kind of, you know, maybe allowing other people to take over.
32:43
So what's interesting is if you look at this and you look at the scarf, the status, the certainty, the autonomy, the relatedness, and the fairness, you can see how it might be different depending on where you are in that life cycle. If you're new, then you maybe want some certainty.
33:01
You want to kind of know what you're getting into a little bit more than an elder because they've been around. They already know that stuff and they have all the context already. So that can really affect. And you might change. Things might become more important to you as you go down the line. All the things may not be important to you all the time.
33:22
I think if you are one of those people who like certainty, you'll always like certainty, but it's just the degree to which that will affect you. So it's something to be really aware of. So let's talk about what makes a troll a troll. There's this thing called the online disinhibition effect,
33:41
and it's really trying to figure out why we just turn into assholes online, which when we're maybe normal, like awesome people, but online. So there are six different reasons why someone might act irrationally or like an asshole online.
34:00
So the first one is the whole anonymity. There are places where you can still be anonymous, which is like good and bad. It's kind of a toss-up. It's a catch-22. But you don't know me, so I can say whatever the hell I want. It doesn't matter because what are you going to do about it? You don't know who I am, so you don't know me.
34:21
The second one is that you can't see me. So you can't judge me based on my physical appearance like maybe happens in the rest of my life. So it's very liberating to just be like on an even playing field with all the other faceless, nameless people, right? Like I can't get judged because I'm a 45-year-old mom from Cincinnati, right?
34:40
Like I can do whatever because you can't see me. The third one is see you later. So it's super easy, as we all know, to drop a comment in on Friday afternoon and then head out and like just let it go and never come back or come back like a couple weeks later and see what kind of destruction you wrought while you were gone, right?
35:01
It's super easy to do that. And there's like no real, you know, no real effect from that. For you, you're just like, ah, it's fine. Number four is it's all in my head. So I can make up whatever I want about who I'm interacting with based on what I've seen. So I could see something that Scott put on a form somewhere
35:24
and I'd be like, well, I bet that guy is this, this, this, and this based on this sentence that he wrote. And I can make it be whatever. So I can immediately like either super like him or I can super hate him based on what I've, this world that I've kind of created just without context. Again, like connecting my own dots.
35:41
I can totally connect my own dots about somebody else just based on, you know, whatever. It's really easy to do that. And therefore I can justify my shitty behavior is what I'm saying. And then number five is it's just a game. Like it's just, it doesn't matter. It's just a game. It's just online. Who cares? Like it's not real life. There's this idea that it's not real life.
36:03
And then number six is that your rules don't apply here. So, you know, there's this kind of like empowerment. Like I can do whatever I want online and you're not the boss of me kind of thing, right? People can just say whatever. I think a lot of forums have controls in place to not have that happen. But there are some places where, you know, it's a free for all.
36:21
And that's kind of why I think we need some sort of rules because if there aren't any, then what do we have? We have a big pile of steaming shit is what we have. So sometimes you need rules. You just, you need them. One final thing on this. We haven't yet figured out regarding body language.
36:43
So there are some conflicting research reports about what percentage of communication is attributed to body language over verbal communication. It varies, but we can safely say that it's non-zero, right? Like there is some percent of communication that is non-verbal.
37:03
And we lose all of that online, whatever that is. We've lost that. Emojis help a little, I guess. You know, put the little smiley passive aggressive emoji after your comment. But it still doesn't really make up for a face-to-face conversation, hanging out with somebody, having a meal with someone,
37:21
like getting to know them as a person. It doesn't really make up for that. So that kind of sucks for us. That's harder. It's making our jobs harder is what I'm saying. So yeah, it's complicated to do things online. And it takes a lot of work.
37:40
It takes a lot of work. So we have individuals working groups collaborating together online. I want you to just kind of keep some of these things in mind. And these slides are up on speaker deck so that you can look through them. I've linked to every single research paper that I referenced here. I'm that nerdy that I just like to read behavioral science research papers
38:02
in my free time. But it's just super fascinating to me and it really can help you with your sense of empathy when you realize that there are hundreds of factors affecting why someone's acting the way they are or why people aren't using your open source project or contributing to it or why someone at work is the way they are.
38:22
There's hundreds of factors. So I hope that you're able to maybe recognize these a little more in ourselves, like mitigate them, because you can actually overcome, like we're not cavemen. We can overcome our negativity bias, our confirmation bias, all of those things. We can absolutely overcome those.
38:40
It just takes a little effort, and it takes a little bit of acknowledging that that's what's maybe happening in these situations. And I also want to just have everyone just, like let's just give each other a little bit of a break. We're pretty hard on each other, so just kind of want to maybe give each other a little bit of a break. I am Elizabeth N. I know it's super confusing because my name is Elizabeth Barron,
39:01
but I'm Elizabeth N because I was Elizabeth Naramore. Everywhere else. So GitHub, Elizabeth N, Twitter, Elizabeth N, Speaker Deck, Elizabeth N, everything else. So yeah, that's the other lesson here as ladies. When you get married, if you get married and you decide to change your name, nightmare, it's a nightmare, because all your personal branding is gone, right?
39:21
Just kidding. I don't really care about personal branding. But Elizabeth at GitHub, if you want to chat, say hi, whatever, you need anything at all, I'm here for you. Here are the three pages of reading, light reading that you can do. But it's really interesting, so I hope that you guys got a lot out of it. And thank you very much.