Nathan Matias
Assistant Professor, Cornell University
Oct 18, 2024
2:00 pm
Oct 18, 2024
2:00 pm
In-person
4 Thomas More St
London E1W 1YW, UK
London E1W 1YW, UK
The Roux Institute
Room
100 Fore Street
Portland, ME 04101
Portland, ME 04101
Network Science Institute
2nd floor
2nd floor
Network Science Institute
11th floor
11th floor
177 Huntington Ave
Boston, MA 02115
Boston, MA 02115
Network Science Institute
2nd floor
2nd floor
Room
58 St Katharine's Way
London E1W 1LP, UK
London E1W 1LP, UK
Talk recording
Theories on the emergence and maintenance of cooperation expect private expressions of gratitude to confirm bonds of reciprocity between people, bonds that uphold cooperation. Yet in large networks of cooperation and exchange, people also contribute to common goods through upstream reciprocity that spreads to people they may not know. Scientific theories expect that expressions of gratitude are indirectly caused in these settings when people receive benefits from others and communicate back their feelings and their sense of obligation. Might those expressions of gratitude also move downstream through networks, widening the spread of thanks and extending contributions to a community?
In this talk, hear preliminary results from a participatory field experiment with Wikipedia communities in the Arabic, German, Polish, and Persian language editions. Working alongside hundreds of volunteers across multiple languages, we randomly assigned over fifteen thousand Wikipedia contributors to receive private messages of thanks from other contributors. We then observed their continued contributions and rate of thanks sent to others on Wikipedia. Overall, this collaborative study with Wikipedia contributors investigates the role that expressions of gratitude play in the diffusion of appreciation and the maintenance of public goods.
About the speaker
Dr. J. Nathan Matias (@natematias@social.coop) is an assistant professor and founder of the Citizens and Technology Lab at Cornell University, which organizes industry-independent participatory science to understand and improve our digital environments. His research and commentary has been published in Nature, PNAS, Nature Human Behavior, ACM CHI, and the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. A graduate of the MIT Center for Civic Media, he has held positions at MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia University, and the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences. Matias has won multiple awards for his science, design, and policy work from the Association of Computer Machinery, Fast Co Company, and the Mozilla Foundation. He is a co-founder of the Coalition for Independent Technology Research, and his journalism has been published by the Guardian, FiveThirtyEight, The Atlantic, and Adventure Cyclist.
Share this page: