Apr 18, 2024 09:00:00

What are affordances, the strategies for having meaningful conversations?

When chatting or having a conversation, the conversation may not go well because the conversation does not flow well or the timing to end the conversation is off. Kevin Dickinson, a writer specializing in education and psychology, explains the concept of 'affordance' that can be used to create great conversations and meaningful interactions by summarizing several studies.

4 key strategies for great conversations - Big Think

https://bigthink.com/the-learning-curve/4-key-strategies-for-great-conversations/

Dickinson refers to situations where conversations don't work out as 'Flerang's Doors' after animator Fritz Flerang . Flerang was a cartoon animator active mainly from the 1930s to the 1960s, and in cartoon animations of the time, a gag was often used in which 'When character A chases another character B through the same door, A comes out of the right door, while B comes out of the left door and never gets caught.' The same goes for conversations that don't work out, Dickinson says, and they're in a barren state, like running around a disjointed corridor just filling up the time for animation.

In addition, the timing of the conversation may rarely be one that satisfies both parties. In a paper published in the journal Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, '

Do conversations end when people want them to? ', the study looked at 932 conversations to see how conversations begin, develop, and end. As a result, whether it was between close friends or strangers, there were very few conversations that ended when both parties wanted them to, and the difference in actual conversation time compared to the time they wanted to continue the conversation was about half.

The researchers likened this result to certain game theories, such as the Prisoner's Dilemma . The Prisoner's Dilemma is a theory that says that even if two people understand that cooperating is a good choice for both of them, if there are conditions under which they can benefit from not cooperating and they don't know what the other person will choose, they will stop cooperating, which will result in a bad outcome for both of them. Conversations often do not have the same goals, and even if they have the same desired conversation time or the same outcome they want to achieve, they often do not understand each other's goals, which can lead to the conversation ending in a way that is not beneficial to either of them.

Psychologist Adam Mastroianni, lead author of the paper, summarized research on conversation and concluded that many conversational difficulties 'arise from an imbalance in give and take.' According to Mastroianni, the person who starts the conversation is always serving while leaving the content of the conversation up to the other person, and the other person feels that they are livening up the conversation, but they are often just responding to the topic and not providing a well-thought-out response. Mastroianni said, 'Neither the giver nor the receiver is 100% correct in the conversation, and both sides are in conflict with each other's claims that the other person must convert or die. Instead of imposing an inquisition on the other person, we should focus on perfecting our own conversation techniques.'

So, instead of the give-and-take of conversation, Mastroianni proposes the technique of '

affordance .' Affordance is a term derived from the word meaning 'to give, to provide,' and refers to the meaning that the environment gives to animals. In psychology, affordance is also used to mean 'the characteristics of the environment that give someone the opportunity to act.' For example, if there is a doorknob, most people recognize that 'this door can be opened and closed,' evoking feelings such as 'I want to open the door' or 'I'm afraid that the door will open.'

In conversation, affordances provide a 'door-opening opportunity' so the other person can grab the doorknob, open it, and walk through the door together, says Mastroianni. On the other hand, if you are lazy and make the topic a give-and-take, you will end up rushing from topic to topic, expecting the other person to follow the topic you gave, and you will fall into the Freleng door state.

As a concrete way to implement affordances, author Mitchell Tillis Rudelman, who became a networking expert after becoming dismayed by the poor communication skills of American corporate leaders, proposed four strategies to open the door to conversation: 'ask good questions,' 'dig deep into what you hear and share,' 'find common ground,' and 'end with a connection.' In any case, it is important to avoid raising topics that end with a one-word response and deepen the conversation by stimulating fundamental curiosity about each other.

Insights such as affordances are the ability of humans to deal with ambiguity and contradictions, and are the source of unique human creativity. For this reason, some research has cited affordances as the most important requirement for 'artificial general intelligence (AGI),' a computational system that can connect, integrate, and coordinate multiple functions. Discussions on affordances are expected to have a diverse impact on future AI research, evolutionary theory, and even the philosophy of science.

The reason why AI research, which is an extension of the algorithm framework, cannot achieve true artificial intelligence is due to the lack of 'affordance' - GIGAZINE

'By understanding how conversations work and figuring out how to create affordances for them, we can spend less time chasing them and more time enjoying them,' Dickinson says.

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