DiRe – Digital Reputation Project

Reputation and EEG Brain Research: A Sociological Reflection on What We Are Doing April 22, 2010

Being a sociologist, I find brain research fascinating because it is much about what sociology is not about. With this mind, let me reflect on Mikko’s (Mikko Salminen’s) post, written on March  18, and shown below i n this blog.

In conducting laboratory experiments using the psychophysiological methods, Mikko writes that we (mostly Niklas, Mikko and Kaisa at CKIR/Aalto) use methods such as electroencephalography, or EEG for short. Other methods would exist such as MEG, PET, and fMRI, for example. (Incidentally, the University of Turku, which Matti and I represent in the DiRe project is the strongholds of PET research in Finland).

Research is always very much about two kinds of choices: (a) what to do and (b) what NOT to do.

The strength of EEG is its applicability to more ecologically valid settings. Mobile, light-weight, recording systems allow data collection in what as closely as possible resemble real life situations. Of course, in the real world, we are not always wired, as we are in the CKIR laboratory. Then, again, often, in what we call the real world, with our mobile phones, iPhones, etc., we in fact are wired anytime, anywhere. So, what may at first resemble a large difference in comparison to the “real world” may not in the ultimately be such a difference after all. So, Part II, we clearly are on to something in our research.

In the DiRe project, our interests focus on those responses of the individuals in our laboratory that tell something about their (and, by extension, our) emotions and motivational processes; in Dire, we aim to study which psychophysiologically observed emotional responses are related to good reputation, bad reputation, both, or neither of the above. For example – and importantly from the perspective of sociological analysis – our EEG research focuses on to what extent an individual will “avoid” or to “approach” a representation of a business firm and its reputation.

At this phase of our research, we will not be able to study “coercion” as it is called in sociology or what is, as far as I know, called “punishment” in brain research. To spell this out: in addition to social norms about what actions and thoughts are to be avoided and which models we deem worth of individual and social aspirations, there is also a third interest in addition to “avoid” and “approach”. So, in sociology, this is called “coercion”, shorthand for violence or the threat thereof. What would this research interest be called in brain research terms? Ok ok “punishment”, but that does not well with “avoidance” and “approach”. How about  “attack”? Or, “aggressiveness”? Or, “anxiety and/or fear”? or Or, “appreciation of a circumstance where we freed from anxiety and fear”?

I do now know, at this stage of our inquiry. What I do already know is that this research interest is worthy of more than passing interest. As the sociologist James G. March has shown, much of what goes in business schools is application of sociology. And, what businesses do is apply what their top managers have learned in business schools.

To make an intermediate summary: Sociological ideas are at the source of many business cases. Ok ok, we will not be studying everything at once. It has been established not only in the first part of this post that this is a bad idea; it has also been established through hundreds of years of serious inquiry in philosophy of science. The mark of good research is not to try to study all at once. To study everything in one go is a recipe for a bad study. In academia, doing such research may lead to a reputation for NOT being a good researcher. “Nobody is perfect, but I” , I used to say when I was learning English and that is when — rightly so — I got a reputation for someone who is just learning English.

Nonetheless, the goal in the next stage of our Digital Reputation research ought to be to seriously consider the business case in the case of reputation management and design ways by which we can take more of business realities and, by extension, sociological insights that often are behind those realities. The big fish is worth the pursuit, even though we may never catch it. Even if, following the line of thought of Ernest Hemingway, we need not appropriate every piece of knowledge we gain, knowledge will help keep us on the right track and track what is worthy of pursuit. Ditto for reputation, its reputation, and the study of these “social facts” and the associated psychophysiological signals.