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Feature bloat: Psychology boffins find people tend to add elements to solve a problem rather than take things away

(2021/04/09)


Scientists working on the psychology of problem solving may have hit upon why things always seem to get more complicated.

A newly uncovered heuristic – a mental shortcut or rule of thumb – shows bias towards adding features to find a solution, rather than subtracting existing features.

[1]

A simple experiment in Lego has provided some insight into the phenomenon.

A team led by Gabrielle Adams, assistant professor of public policy and psychology at the University of Virginia, presented 197 participants with a Lego tower, four Duplo blocks high, six-by-six nodules on the horizontal plane. Above the tower was an 8x8 flat roof supported in the corner by a single 2x2 block.

[2]

The objective was to stabilise the roof so it would not fall onto a figure below when a brick was placed on top of it.

All the participants were told they could alter the structure however they wanted to. A control group was told "each piece that you add costs ten cents" while a "subtraction-cue condition" group was told "each piece that you add costs 10 cents but removing pieces is free."

Is that... is that a piece of Unikitty? Remembering Skylab via the medium of Lego [3]READ MORE

The simplest and cheapest solution was to remove the single block supporting the roof and attach it directly to the tower. But only 41 per cent of participants went with this solution. The remainder decided to add three bricks to support the roof. However, for the group given the subtraction-cue condition, 61 per cent of participants took the first option.

Adams and team also studied how participants make a 10×10 grid of green and white boxes symmetrical on a computer screen. They found people tend to add green boxes to the emptier half of the grid rather than removing them from the fuller half, even when doing the latter would have been more efficient.

The researcher also studied how people completed this task under "cognitive load." While working on the task, they were asked to press the "F" key whenever they saw a 5 in a string of numerals passing across the top of the screen. The result was that people systematically default to searching for additive transformations, and consequently overlook subtractive transformations.

[P]eople are biased towards creating solutions by adding features rather than taking them away.... A study also observed the tendency at an organisational level

The researchers seem to have discovered a heuristic that people are biased towards creating solutions by adding features rather than taking them away. A study also observed the tendency at an organisational level.

For example, looking at university archives, they found that an incoming president had requested suggestions for changes that would allow the institution to better serve its students and community. Only 11 per cent of the responses involved removing an existing regulation, practice or programme.

[4]

Click to enlarge

[5]The research , published in Nature , argued that the discovery could have far-reaching ramifications.

"As with many heuristics, it is possible that defaulting to a search for additive ideas often serves its users well," the paper said. "However, the tendency to overlook subtraction may be implicated in a variety of costly modern trends, including overburdened minds and schedules, increasing red tape in institutions and humanity's encroachment on the safe operating conditions for life on Earth.

[6]

"If people default to adequate additive transformations – without considering comparable (and sometimes superior) subtractive alternatives – they may be missing opportunities to make their lives more fulfilling, their institutions more effective and their planet more liveable." ®

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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YHAl4TPVpzSpUDu8RAEJOwAAAFM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YHAl4TPVpzSpUDu8RAEJOwAAAFM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[3] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/06/skylab_lego/

[4] https://regmedia.co.uk/2021/04/08/adding_diagram.png

[5] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03380-y

[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YHAl4TPVpzSpUDu8RAEJOwAAAFM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[7] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/

Blergh

By saying the cost of adding bricks they are insinuating a list of allowable moves. Therefore in the Lego example the implication is that everything should stay where it is and you should only stabilise the roof, not redesign the building.

However, regardless of their crap experiment design I probably do still believe their hypothesis.

Lego example

Anonymous Coward

Yeah, I think I would also have assumed that the roof was raised up on that brick for a reason, and so also added more supports. But three total should have been enough, it wouldn't have needed four, ... or maybe a minimal solution would be just two staggered slightly given they're 2x2 not 1x1? Hmm...

I think there is still some duplo lurking in a box somewhere. Hang on whilst I go get it, and design a proper experimental procedure for stability testing.... :-)

Re: Lego example

TRT

TBH, I'd have just moved the single brick over to a point where it could stand the new mass being added.

Re: Lego example

Anonymous Coward

Or called in The Kragle.

TRT

I agree that all of the experimental designs the used possess implicit preconditions. A roof is designed to be at a particular height, therefore the maintenance of that feature could be assumed to be an implicit design condition. White and green squares... white is often considered to be a background colour, so is one adding white or removing green? There is an implicit precondition required that white is seen as a background colour instead of anything else like the toggle of green. And as for the numbers distraction task... that's just a fudge for an improperly designed experiment.

However, like the previous comment, I too believe them! If you have for example code that doesn't react well to a specific input condition, the all too common response is to trap that input condition rather than rethink the code so that it works correctly with a wider range of inputs. Thus we end up for example with UIs that utterly refuse to allow one to progress to the next stage without being fully completed even when certain fields may not have a value, so some users "make up rubbish" as the value for a stubborn field whereas a NULL would be perfectly OK if only someone had allowed that in the backend to begin with.

Anonymous Coward

I think that was the point... they cued the participants towards using different transformation methods.

"You can add", "You can add or take away".

Still a poor design though.

There was no "You can do anything you want!" or "Make the fewest changes" instruction.

Weylin

"All the participants were told they could alter the structure however they wanted to"

people tend to add elements to solve a problem

Mike 137

This was clearly demonstrated by Henry Ford's famous request to " simplicate and add lightness ".

Re: people tend to add elements to solve a problem

Anonymous Coward

I wrote you a long letter because I didn't have time to write a short one...

Re: people tend to add elements to solve a problem

daemonoid

Colin Chapman

Re: people tend to add elements to solve a problem

Thomas Gray

Wasn’t it Colin Chapman of Lotus (cars) who said “simplify and add lightness”?

Re: people tend to add elements to solve a problem

Fr. Ted Crilly

Ed Heiniman designer at Douglas aircraft

Doctor Syntax

I rather like the saying that a design isn't complete until there's nothing left that can be taken away. It took me years to realise that that was so often the case.

until there's nothing left t

Paul Kinsler

Reminds me somewhat of the stained glass window reconstruction project in KW Jeter's 'The Glass Hammer' ...

From the abstract

Mike 137

" Defaulting to searches for additive changes may be one reason that people struggle to mitigate [...] damaging effects on the planet "

So maybe less consumption, travelling, fuel burning, waste production etc., rather than allowing consumption, travelling, fuel burning, waste production etc. to increase for ever but doing it "more greenly", might be a good idea?

Re: From the abstract

TRT

My local council seems to be very keen on more bicycles, more recycling, more pavement, more flats, more council tax...

Re: From the abstract

Julz

Less people would help.

Thus neatly explaining ...

jake

... modern bloated software and the move to "clouds", despite their obvious flaws caused by adding extra layers of completely unnecessary complexity to a problem.

Re: Thus neatly explaining ...

Woza

systemd syndrome - a new entry for the DSM?

Proponents, Opponents, Observers

Anonymous Coward

"As with many heuristics, it is possible that defaulting to a search for additive ideas often serves its users well,"

Yeh, but the model is big already, it is built on the work of a *lot* of people, lots of bricks have been placed, so who are you, *one* person, to dare question if any or all those people screwed up and misplaced their bricks! I think that's the logic there. Adding 3 blocks adds to their work, removing 3 blocks detracts from their work and risks criticism. Hence additive is easier.

Look at a more concrete example, retrograde motion of planets:

https://earthsky.org/space/what-is-retrograde-motion

A bunch of very clever mathematicians built a model to predict the apparent backwards loops-da-loop the planets took, given the earth is the center of the universe. It must be true because observation fits the model and the earth must be the center of the universe. Some fixes were needed, so crap was piled on crap, and it became the science of the day.

Even if it a ridiculous model with planets doing dances. "Who am I to question the complex, detailed and working model of all these smart people?" thinks your astronomer of the day. It's amazing how such a ridiculous system could stand as true for so long, yet it did.

Then Copernicus and later Kepler *did* question that model, and did point out the *sun* is at the center and the planets move around it, and the loop-da-loop of the planet became a simple net motion of the observed planet and the observer planet earth. Suddenly the stupidity of the original model is apparent, at least to *some* people, but not *all* people.

I think there are 3 groups in any argument: The proponents of a new model, the opponents who defend the existing model, and the observers who sit on the sidelines and watch.

Arguments aren't really about winning over the opponent and getting them to change their mind. They simply don't change their mind. They double down. Hurl insults and crap and misdirection. The more their self worth is tied to the broken model, the nastier they get defending it. Self preservation is an understandable human trait.

No, the purpose of an argument is to plant the flaw in the *observer* and flip the balance of understanding away from the broken existing model. If you can make it so clear and simple that the undeniable nature of the flaw is apparent to a lot of people, you can flip the understanding quicker, even as the opponents seek to obfuscate the mistake.

The balance of understanding shifts as new scientists come in, realize they can make their name and a flip in understanding happens, and science moves off in a new direction.

I think the authors missed some irony-

Chairman of the Bored

Writing a paper asserting people are hardwired to create more complexity, while working in a field in which your worth is measure by the number of papers one writes.

Back to my day job of creating more product...

We are all hamsters on the wheel, my friends.

Jenga

Ken Moorhouse

So where does that fit in to this theory then?

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a proverb is no
proverb to you till your life has illustrated it. -- John Keats