Cyberpsychology or patterns and styles of information search
Each person has his own preferred way of searching for information. Whether it’s a work assignment, a pie recipe, or page 67 on a black and orange website. A new study sheds light on so-called “netrunner archetypes” that show exactly how you search for information online.
Search behavior involving nearly 500,000 people from 50 countries has shed light on how mood, education level, gender, background and culture influence how we seek new knowledge. And which archetype is closer to you: hunter, gatherer or dancer?
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Personal patterns of search behavior
While many of us spend hours searching Wikipedia following a more or less linear chain of questions, others jump from topic to topic, and still others combine both processes to form an individual imprint.
A 2020 study in which researchers at the University of Pennsylvania measured the 15-minute Wikipedia browsing habits of 149 participants over three weeks found two types of information seekers: gatherers and hunters.
In a 2020 study, the hunter type was characterized by high clustering and a short search path. Collectors were defined by a low proportion of clustering and a long common path. In the new study, which significantly expands the material of previous works and analyzes the behavior of 482,760 people from 50 countries who use Wikipedia on their smartphones, scientists have confirmed that these two types dominate around the world, and a new category has also appeared – dancers.
The search archetype “gatherer” is characterized by a love for everything new, he happily jumps from topic to topic, seemingly for no reason. Opposite him is the hunter archetype, a purposeful, focused person who seeks to solve a problem, find a missing factor, or fill in a model of the world.
Danny Bassett of the University of Pennsylvania.
Gender and territorial factors
As Bassett and colleagues note in this cyberpsychology study, “A gatherer looks for patterns of novelty in a topic of interest, a hunter looks for patterns of utility, and a dancer jumps across completely disparate domains of knowledge. These three search styles emphasize a multidimensional approach to the study of novelty, bringing individual differences to the fore.”
So what does this tell us, other than that some of our quests have more ramifications than side quests in Skyrim, exerting a digital influence on the mind? Through a systematic analysis, the researchers found huge contrasts in search patterns between countries with more advanced general education and gender equality compared to regions with greater social inequality. And it can help to improve the development of tools for learning in different parts of the world, to match the system to pupils/students.
We found that in countries with high inequality, especially in terms of gender equality and access to education, people tend to view information with a more targeted intent. In contrast, in countries with an emphasis on equality, the review was larger and covered a wider variety or topics. Although the exact reasons why this happens are not fully understood, we have some good guesses, and we believe these results will prove useful in helping scholars in our field better understand the nature of curiosity in different cultures and countries around the world.
The study was co-authored by Dale Zhou.
Countries or territories assessed were: Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia , Ireland Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden Switzerland, Taiwan, Ukraine, Great Britain and the USA.
In these countries, the Wikipedia mobile application was read in 14 different languages.
Approach to research
To reduce bias, the 482,760 participants—a “naturalistic data set”—were drawn from a larger pool of more than two million Wikipedia users because their browsing history and patterns were easier to compare with the 2020 study. The researchers defined the data set by taking into account: “The number of articles visited, the number of unique articles visited, the number of days of use in one month, and the proportion of articles obtained through Wikipedia hyperlinks compared to links from search engines.”
Unlike the controlled study in Pennsylvania, participants in the naturalistic data set had no prior knowledge of the study, so search patterns were slightly different—a total of 482,760 people read fewer articles, clicked on fewer unique pages, and followed fewer number of Wikipedia internal links in fewer days. Using a statistical method known as propensity score matching, the researchers were able to compare study 2020 participants (treated subjects) with observational data (untreated subjects).
The result was a network of search patterns that was illustrated as a neural network showing the difference between the cyber persona of a hunter and a gatherer. In addition to the national factors that determine search style, the study also confirmed the existence of the “dancer” type, a hypothetical archetype that was mentioned in previous work but not discovered.
A dancer is someone who moves along an information path, but unlike a collector, he makes leaps between ideas in a special, even choreographed way. Such people do not jump chaotically, they combine different fields of knowledge to create something new
The co-author of the study is Perry Zurna, professor of philosophy at American University.
This viewing style differs from the hunter-gatherer style in that the dancer weaves his way through new information from broad themes that have a tenuous but tangible connection.
It’s not so much about coincidence as it is about the ability to see connections where others don’t.
Danny Bassett of the University of Pennsylvania.
Search patterns
The study identified specific areas of interest across countries and language groups. Pickers tended to read more articles on cultural topics, including media, food, art, philosophy, and religion. Hunters were more likely to read pages about science, technology, engineering and math.
Hunters tended to read articles about history and society in some languages (German and English), while gatherers tended to do so in other languages (Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, Dutch, and Chinese). , that gatherers gravitate more toward social themes than hunters.
By looking at web browsing habits in the context of population-wide indicators of education, mood, well-being and gender equality, the researchers put forward three hypotheses about why different regions are dominated by gatherers and hunters.
The first hypothesis is built around the fact that, perhaps, in countries with high inequality, more patriarchal structures of oppression also flourish, which limit approaches to knowledge production, making the style of their extraction more hunting. Countries with egalitarian values, on the other hand, are open to a diversity of ideas, and therefore to a diversity of ways we interact with the world. This is more in line with the style of a picker – someone who moves between ideas in a very open manner.
Danny Bassett of the University of Pennsylvania.
The second hypothesis is built around the fact that knowledge seekers use Wikipedia for different purposes in different countries. For example, users from developed countries may visit the site for entertainment or recreation, not for work.
The third hypothesis is related to differences in nationality, age, socio-economic status and education.
Conditionality of curiosity
Based on the results of the research, the following can be confidently stated. A person’s curiosity and desire for knowledge depends on a huge number of factors, and we also know little about the factors that influence web browsing habits.
This tells us that people, and probably children, have different styles of curiosity, and this can affect how they approach learning. A child with a hunter-gatherer search pattern may have difficulty being assessed using methods that promote a gatherer style, or vice versa. Understanding these styles will help us tailor educational experiences to better support individual learning paths. One question I’m particularly interested in is whether people search for information differently at different times of the day—perhaps we behave like hunters in the morning and gatherers in the evening.
Danny Bassett of the University of Pennsylvania.
Not surprisingly, this comprehensive study now paves the way for a number of follow-up studies and also sheds light on the learning patterns of artificial intelligence systems.
This opens new lines of research, including the role of biological processes in shaping how we seek information. Integrating these approaches into interaction-learning AI systems is an increasingly important area of research.
Shubhankar Patankar, Professor of Penn Engineering.
Incidentally, both studies focus on Wikipedia as an ad-free encyclopedia, as it is considered a reliable model for studying how we satisfy our curiosity on the Internet.
Wikipedia is a special place on the Internet. The site presents exclusively free content and no commercial advertising. Most of the rest of today’s digital space is designed to activate people’s buying impulses or influence the ranking of our media content. This raises the question of how much control we have over where our curiosity leads us in our search for information outside of Wikipedia.
Annenberg School for Communication Associate Professor David Lydon-Staley, author of this study and lead author of the 2020 study.
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