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From rule breaking and theft to verbal abuse and foul language, one customer’s behavior can negatively affect another customer’s experience. How hospitality businesses can best respond to instances of customer misbehavior can depend on the strictness of societal norms, according to a new study from researchers in the Penn State School of Hospitality Management.

The study, published in the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, found that customers who observe misbehavior in countries with strict societal norms—or specific expectations for how people should act in public—respond better to an apology, while customers who observe misbehavior in nations with looser societal norms respond better to acknowledgements or appreciations of their patience.

Anna Mattila, Marriott Professor of Lodging Management at Penn State; Barbara Atanga, assistant professor of marketing at Johnson C. Smith University who earned her doctorate in hospitality management at Penn State this year; and Lavi Peng, current Penn State doctoral candidate, led this research.

“When customers observe other customers misbehaving, it affects their satisfaction,” Mattila said. “They become unhappy with their experience. This can be costly to businesses, as these customers may never come back. We wanted to identify a way that businesses could satisfy customers who observe these unfortunate instances.”

The researchers conducted two studies to find the effect of apologies and appreciation on customers who observe misbehavior. To survey participants with both distinct strict and loose societal norms, the research team recruited participants from the United States, a country with loose norms, and India, a country with strict norms.

Each study recruited participants via Amazon Mechanical Turk, and participants were randomly assigned to either an apology or appreciation condition.

The first study surveyed 187 people—97 from the United States and 90 from India—and used a hypothetical scenario in which participants were asked to imagine checking in at a front desk while observing two guests in an argument.

The second study surveyed 202 people—101 from the United States and 101 from India—and used a hypothetical situation in which participants were asked to imagine dining in a restaurant while nearby customers were being disruptive.

In both studies, an apology resulted in higher recovery satisfaction among observing customers with strict societal norms, whereas showing appreciation led to enhanced recovery satisfaction among observing customers with loose societal norms.

“Businesses may see the terms ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’ as interchangeable,” Atanga said. “However, these terms serve distinct purposes. ‘Sorry’ explicitly says this is wrong whereas ‘thank you’ is more subtle and implicit. Businesses should understand the strictness or looseness context of their customer base to use these two strategies effectively.”

In a third study, the researchers tested if violations of perceived norms drive the impact of recovery strategy on satisfaction among observing customers. This study surveyed 180 participants—95 from the United States and 85 from India—via Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Participants were randomly assigned to either an apology or appreciation condition in a hypothetical scenario where they observed two other patrons arguing because one of them jumped the queue.

The researchers found that acknowledging customer misbehavior had a mediating effect on the observing customer’s recovery for participants with loose norms but not for participants with strict norms.

“People with strict norms may appreciate an apology, but this may not be enough to reduce the impact of the norm violation,” Peng said. “This could be why the mediating effect was not found for those with stricter norms.”

The researchers said effective ways businesses can address the negative implications of customer misbehavior is to practice service recovery techniques. For example, apologies—even generalized ones like “sorry for the inconvenience”—or by purposely showing appreciation like thanking customers for their patience can help other customers’ satisfaction with the business when they observe customer misbehavior.

“Saying ‘sorry’ or ‘thank you’ is a cheap, easy way for businesses to conduct service recovery,” Atanga said. “This is also a cost-effective strategy, as saying ‘sorry’ or ‘thank you’ does not have a monetary cost attached to it.”

The researchers also said businesses should train their employees in how to properly handle situations where customer misbehavior may occur. Employees should learn to listen and remain calm in these situations before evaluating how best to act, and to do so strategically.

In addition, brands operating across different nations should adjust and adapt their recovery strategies as opposed to having a single, universal service recovery protocol, according to the researchers.

“Businesses can get so wrapped up by customers who are misbehaving that they forget about the customers who witness the norm violation,” Peng said. “Even if observing customers don’t actively speak out, they still may have noted the inconvenience in their heads.”

More information:
Barbara Apaalabono Atanga et al, Customer misbehavior: The impact of a symbolic recovery strategy and cultural tightness-looseness on observing customers, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.jhtm.2024.06.007

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Pennsylvania State University

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Societal factors can shape how companies best respond after customers misbehave (2024, September 12)
retrieved 12 September 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-09-societal-factors-companies-customers-misbehave.html

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Sharing biosignals with online gaming partners can enhance mutual sense of social presence

September 12, 2024

Sharing biosignals with online gaming partners to enhance a mutual sense of social presence between complete strangers — Credit: University of Tsukuba

Although interactive online platforms, including esports platforms, aim to foster close connections between people, they often fall short of supporting the creation of bonds between the interaction partners. Researchers at the University of Tsukuba have discovered that sharing biological signals (biosignals), such as heart rate data, while playing online games can enhance the sense of cooperative play, even among complete strangers.

In their study published in the journal IEEE Access, the researchers have identified a method for augmenting the sense of social presence in online interactions through the sharing of biosignals. Biosignals such as heart rate can convey a considerable amount of information about one’s state of being. If one is anxious, their heart rate increases; if they are relaxed, their heart rate decreases.

The researchers implemented a real-time biosignal-sharing platform and tested it in online gaming sessions between players who were strangers to one another.

The study participants comprised 20 gamers who played a set of five matches of a soccer game, each time against a new opponent. The five matches were played under different conditions: playing online without any information about the opponent, playing while viewing a live video of the opponent’s face, playing while viewing the heart rate information of the opponent, playing while viewing a live video of the opponent’s face and heart rate information, and playing offline in the same room with the opponent.

The findings revealed that this method of sharing biosignals could augment the sense of social presence. The participants regularly looked at the heart rate information of their opponent during the match, similar to how they often looked at an opponent’s face when it was presented to them. This effect was further amplified when the live video and heart rate information were presented together.

Questionnaires designed to measure the level of perceived social presence were administered to participants. The questionnaires revealed that although the augmentation method could not achieve the same level of reported social presence as when individuals play together in the same room, the combination of bio-information and face video was the closest to this optimal condition.

In a world filled with online meetings where people are converted into square portrait representations of themselves, this study presents a method for augmenting online interactions to make them more meaningful and fulfilling.

More information:
Modar Hassan et al, Augmenting the Sense of Social Presence in Online Video Games Through the Sharing of Biosignals, IEEE Access (2024). DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3429247

Provided by
University of Tsukuba

Citation:
Sharing biosignals with online gaming partners can enhance mutual sense of social presence (2024, September 12)
retrieved 12 September 2024
from https://techxplore.com/news/2024-09-biosignals-online-gaming-partners-mutual.html

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Conversations with AI can successfully reduce belief in conspiracy theories

September 12, 2024

AI brain — Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Have you ever tried to convince a conspiracy theorist that the moon landing wasn’t staged? You likely didn’t succeed, but ChatGPT might have better luck, according to research by MIT Sloan School of Management professor David Rand and American University professor of psychology Thomas Costello, who conducted the research during his postdoctoral position at MIT Sloan.

In a new paper “Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI” published in Science, the researchers show that large language models can effectively reduce individuals’ beliefs in conspiracy theories—and that these reductions last for at least two months—a finding that offers new insights into the psychological mechanisms behind the phenomenon as well as potential tools to fight the spread of conspiracies.

Going down the rabbit hole

Conspiracy theories—beliefs that certain events are the result of secret plots by influential actors—have long been a subject of fascination and concern. Their persistence in the face of counter-evidence has led to the conclusion that they fulfill deep-seated psychological needs, rendering them impervious to facts and logic. According to this conventional wisdom, once someone “falls down the rabbit hole,” it’s virtually impossible to pull them back out.

But for Rand, Costello, and their co-author professor Gordon Pennycook from Cornell University, who have conducted extensive research on the spread and uptake of misinformation, that conclusion didn’t ring true. Instead, they suspected a simpler explanation was at play.

“We wondered if it was possible that people simply hadn’t been exposed to compelling evidence disproving their theories,” Rand explained. “Conspiracy theories come in many varieties—the specifics of the theory and the arguments used to support it differ from believer to believer. So if you are trying to disprove the conspiracy but haven’t heard these particular arguments, you won’t be prepared to rebut them.”

Effectively debunking conspiracy theories, in other words, would require two things: personalized arguments and access to vast quantities of information—both now readily available through generative AI.

Conspiracy conversations with GPT4

To test their theory, Costello, Pennycook, and Rand harnessed the power of GPT-4 Turbo, OpenAI’s most advanced large language model, to engage over 2,000 conspiracy believers in personalized, evidence-based dialogues.

The study employed a unique methodology that allowed for deep engagement with participants’ individual beliefs. Participants were first asked to identify and describe a conspiracy theory they believed in using their own words, along with the evidence supporting their belief.

GPT-4 Turbo then used this information to generate a personalized summary of the participant’s belief and initiate a dialogue. The AI was instructed to persuade users that their beliefs were untrue, adapting its strategy based on each participant’s unique arguments and evidence.

These conversations, lasting an average of 8.4 minutes, allowed the AI to directly address and refute the specific evidence supporting each individual’s conspiratorial beliefs, an approach that was impossible to test at scale prior to the technology’s development.

A significant—and durable—effect

The results of the intervention were striking. On average, the AI conversations reduced the average participant’s belief in their chosen conspiracy theory by about 20%, and about one in four participants—all of whom believed the conspiracy beforehand—disavowed the conspiracy after the conversation. This impact proved durable, with the effect remaining undiminished even two months post-conversation.

The AI conversation’s effectiveness was not limited to specific types of conspiracy theories. It successfully challenged beliefs across a wide spectrum, including conspiracies that potentially hold strong political and social salience, like those involving COVID-19 and fraud during the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

While the intervention was less successful among participants who reported that the conspiracy was central to their worldview, it did still have an impact, with little variance across demographic groups.

Notably, the impact of the AI dialogues extended beyond mere changes in belief. Participants also demonstrated shifts in their behavioral intentions related to conspiracy theories. They reported being more likely to “unfollow” people espousing conspiracy theories online, and more willing to engage in conversations challenging those conspiratorial beliefs.

The opportunities and dangers of AI

Costello, Pennycook, and Rand are careful to point to the need for continued responsible AI deployment since the technology could potentially be used to convince users to believe in conspiracies as well as to abandon them.

Nevertheless, the potential for positive applications of AI to reduce belief in conspiracies is significant. For example, AI tools could be integrated into search engines to offer accurate information to users searching for conspiracy-related terms.

“This research indicates that evidence matters much more than we thought it did—so long as it is actually related to people’s beliefs,” Pennycook said. “This has implications far beyond just conspiracy theories: Any number of beliefs based on poor evidence could, in theory, be undermined using this approach.”

Beyond the specific findings of the study, its methodology also highlights the ways in which large language models could revolutionize social science research, said Costello, who noted that the researchers used GPT-4 Turbo to not only conduct conversations but also to screen respondents and analyze data.

“Psychology research used to depend on graduate students interviewing or conducting interventions on other students, which was inherently limiting,” Costello said. “Then, we moved to online survey and interview platforms that gave us scale but took away the nuance. Using artificial intelligence allows us to have both.”

These findings fundamentally challenge the notion that conspiracy believers are beyond the reach of reason. Instead, they suggest that many are open to changing their views when presented with compelling and personalized counter-evidence.

“Before we had access to AI, conspiracy research was largely observation and correlational, which led to theories about conspiracies filling psychological needs,” said Costello. “Our explanation is more mundane—much of the time, people just didn’t have the right information.”

Additionally, members of the public interested in this ongoing work can visit a website and try out the intervention for themselves.

More information:
Thomas H. Costello, Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI, Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.adq1814. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq1814

Provided by
MIT Sloan School of Management

Citation:
Conversations with AI can successfully reduce belief in conspiracy theories (2024, September 12)
retrieved 12 September 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-09-conversations-ai-successfully-belief-conspiracy.html

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Say ‘neigh’ to west Nile virus, eastern equine encephalitis

September 12, 2024

horses — Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

As summer turns to fall, most of the U.S. officially enters peak mosquito season. And with peak mosquito season comes a rise in mosquito-borne illnesses, including West Nile Virus and Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE).

Because these vector-borne diseases affect multiple species of animals, including humans, Dr. Amanda Trimble, a clinical assistant professor of equine internal medicine at the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, explains how West Nile Virus and EEE affect horses and provides tips to owners for helping their equine companions prevent these diseases.

What are West Nile Virus and EEE?

While West Nile Virus and EEE are viral infections that most commonly affect horses, humans, and birds, neither is zoonotic (meaning you can’t get it from your horse), according to Trimble.

“Neither disease is contagious directly to humans from horses and vice versa; however, cases seen in either species may indicate that the diseases are present in the local mosquito population,” Trimble said. “Both viruses need mosquito vectors to be spread, meaning that a mosquito must collect blood from an infected carrier of the virus—typically a bird—and then bite a horse or human in order for the disease to spread.”

Because West Nile Virus and EEE depend on mosquitoes to spread, Trimble said it is important for horse owners to be mindful of mosquito season.

“Peak incidence follows mosquitoes—which typically peak between July and October for most of the United States,” she shared. “But because Texas is always warm, mosquito season never really ends.”

As a result, Trimble recommends Texans help protect their horses from West Nile Virus and EEE year-round.

How do West Nile Virus and EEE affect horses?

Both viruses can be fatal for horses.

“About one-third of affected horses—typically those that are unvaccinated—may die from West Nile Virus, while more than 90% of unvaccinated horses die from an EEE infection,” Trimble said. “With both, disease and clinical signs may still occur in horses that are vaccinated but are usually much less severe. However, horses that survive may have permanent neurological deficits.”

Trimble recommends owners contact a veterinarian if they suspect their horse has either virus based on the following symptoms:

West Nile Virus symptoms include:

Lethargy
Fever
Anorexia (low appetite)
Neurological signs such as sudden onset tremors (especially in the muzzle), weakness, or uncoordinated walking, stumbling, or falling
Recumbency, or lying down without being able to rise

EEE symptoms include:

Lethargy
Fever
Anorexia
Neurological signs including an inability to swallow, tremors, head pressing, seizures, circling, blindness, rapid behavior changes, and uncoordinated walking, stumbling, or falling
Recumbency

Trimble said a veterinary team can provide supportive care to a horse diagnosed with either virus.

“Care is largely supportive. For non-severe cases, this may include anti-inflammatories and keeping the horse hydrated and eating,” Trimble said. “More severe cases, which includes horses with severe neurological signs or recumbency (can’t get up), may need to be hospitalized or referred to a facility that can provide intravenous fluids and more intensive medical care.”

Protecting horses from West Nile Virus and EEE

Protecting horses from West Nile Virus and EEE starts with creating a prevention plan with a veterinarian, according to Trimble, including vaccination. Trimble recommends horses receive the vaccine twice a year in states like Texas where mosquitoes are present year-round.

“Both diseases are considered “Equine Core Vaccines’ by the American Association of Equine Practitioners and all horses should receive them,” Trimble said. “These diseases do not need other horses to be spread, and they can cause severe and potentially fatal neurological disease if a horse is not properly protected from them. The vaccines are safe and effective and can help decrease the spread and severity of disease.”

In addition to keeping horses up-to-date on their core vaccinations, Trimble recommends implementing environmental management strategies as well. These strategies can help protect your horse by reducing the mosquito population in their environment and include:

Eliminating standing water, which is a breeding ground for mosquitoes
Installing mosquito lights or zappers
Using fly sheets or boots
Applying fly spray and other insect repellent frequently
Adding a supplement containing garlic to horses’ feed may be helpful
Keeping horses inside at dawn, dusk, and at night
Cleaning water buckets and tanks at least once daily
Running fans
Introducing mosquito-eating fish to ponds and lakes

“Vaccinating horses and proper mosquito management should decrease risk of fatal disease substantially,” Trimble said.

Finally, as both diseases can affect humans, although rarely, Trimble recommends owners also learn how to protect themselves from mosquito bites by following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.

Keeping mosquito safety top of mind through the changing seasons will help ensure the entire family—including horses—is happy, healthy, and protected from West Nile Virus and EEE.

Provided by
Texas A&M University

Citation:
Say ‘neigh’ to west Nile virus, eastern equine encephalitis (2024, September 12)
retrieved 12 September 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-09-neigh-west-nile-virus-eastern.html

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English Premier League football club’s performance can influence students’ choice of university, research finds

September 12, 2024

Students can be swayed by the performance of English Premier League (EPL) football clubs when choosing a university, according to research.

A study led by the University of Stirling suggests that a university may be more attractive for prospective students if its local football team competes at the top level of English football.

“Scoring goals: The impact of English Premier League football teams on local university admissions” is published in the November issue of Economics Letters.

Where a university has a name association with a team that loses its place in the EPL for one season or more, it leads to an average 4% to 8% drop in undergraduate admissions, the research found.

The study revealed that relegation from the EPL significantly decreases admissions growth in universities with a name association, by about 7% on average, compared with universities associated with teams that just escaped relegation.

In cases where the associated team bounced back to the EPL after one season, the drop in admissions due to the initial relegation was smaller at around 4%. But the effect on admissions was larger, at 8%, if the associated team did not bounce straight back to the EPL after relegation.

The research is thought to be the first of its kind looking at the link between British football clubs and university admissions outcomes; with just one similar study previously conducted in Europe—considering clubs and universities in Germany.

The study, carried out in collaboration with Birmingham Business School and the University of Reading, used data on annual admissions for UK universities from the Higher Education Statistics Authority, and EPL season data from worldfootball.net.

Dr. Carl Singleton, Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Stirling Management School and lead author of the study, said, “While in the U.S. and Canada there are proven links between the athletic performance of college sports programs and the quality and quantity of college applications received, there is a dearth of research in the UK and worldwide into how local football teams affect university admissions.

“Our results perhaps explain why UK universities close to three former Premier League teams have recently taken steps to visibly align with their local football teams, namely Reading Football Club and the University of Reading, Portsmouth Football Club and the University of Portsmouth, and Bolton Wanderers and the University of Bolton.”

He added, “With the current highly competitive environment in UK higher education, it wouldn’t be surprising to see more clubs attempting to form marketing links with their local football teams, or even other globally visible entities. Although our study did not find anything conclusive about international recruitment, we know that the University of Manchester, for example, has previously accompanied Manchester United on their pre-season tours in Southeast Asia.”

The researchers excluded small universities with less than 7,000 admissions a year; teams based in Greater London because of the difficulty of associating performance with any one university; and Manchester United and Manchester City, Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday, because of the challenge of isolating which football club‘s performance might be affecting the local university.

More information:
Carl Singleton et al, Scoring goals: The impact of English Premier League football teams on local university admissions, Economics Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2024.111957

Provided by
University of Stirling

Citation:
English Premier League football club’s performance can influence students’ choice of university, research finds (2024, September 12)
retrieved 12 September 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-09-english-premier-league-football-club.html

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