Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World (Bradford Books) [Hardcover]

Alex Pentland (Author), Tracy Heibeck (Contributor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0262162563 | ISBN-13: 978-0262162562 | Publication Date: August 15, 2008 | Edition: First Edition

How understanding the signaling within social networks can change the way we make decisions, work with others, and manage organizations.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Designated by Newsweek in 1997 as one of the 100 Americans most likely to shape the century, Pentland (director, Digital Life Consortium, MIT) introduces a fascinating new way to understand how we read our social environment. To gather scientific data, Pentland has devised the "sociometer," an ingenious instrument for measuring the ways in which humans communicate by "honest," or unconscious, signaling. This device allows Pentland to track social networking by measuring four kinds of signals: influence, mimicry, activity, and consistency. He argues that the influence each person has in social interactions, the reflexive copying of gestures, increased levels of activity when mutual interest occurs, and the consistency of emphasis and timing contribute to our unconscious, hardwired paths of communication. Pentland's lucid treatment of complicated psychobiological principles effectively enables lay readers to grasp difficult but significant concepts. Moreover, his appendixes provide full descriptions of the relevant research methodology. Similar in scope to Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Pentland's book is better-suited and recommended for university collections.—Lynne F. Maxwell, Villanova Univ. Sch. of Law Lib., PA
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Review

"A technology poised to change the world." Technology Review

Alex (Sandy) Pentland is a leader in organizational engineering, mobile information systems, and computational social science. He directs the MIT Media Lab's Digital Life Consortium, a group of more than twenty multinational corporations exploring new ways to innovate, and is Founder of MIT's Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, established to support aspiring entrepreneurs in emerging markets. In 1997, Newsweek magazine named him one of the 100 Americans likely to shape the century.

"A technology poised to change the world."-- Technology Review

"A new understanding of organizational effectiveness." -- Strategy+Business

"A new understanding of organizational effectiveness." Strategy+Business

"Pentland's lucid treatment of complicated psychobiological principles effectively enables lay readers to grasp difficult but significant concepts... Similar in scope to Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Pentland's book is better-suited and recommended for university collections." Library Journal

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; First Edition edition (August 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262162563
• ISBN-13: 978-0262162562
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #421,869 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More details please, February 3, 2010

By 

Lori A. Williams (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World (Bradford Books) (Hardcover)

I was very excited to read this book. I had heard about the research from NPR and wanted to know the details. I was trained as a scientist and I love seeing how other scientists communicate their ideas to the public.

I was hoping this book would answer questions I had after hearing the NPR piece. How did the researchers get the idea to look at nonverbal signals in the first place? Which signals tend to be most predictive? Are there nonverbal signals that I give out that I might want to change depending on context?

After reading this book, including the appendices, I'm sad to say I still don't have answers at a level of detail that is satisfying to me. I don't really have ideas on what I could do differently, nor do I have enough info to convince another scientist (read - my husband) that the research is solid. The book was long on hypothesizing about applications of the work, but short on the science. While the authors gave many details about their statistical methods, I wanted more information about how their sociometers worked, what the data looked like that came out of the devices, how they processed that data and what kind of decisions they had to make in data collection and processing.

I may have been a little harsh in judging Honest Signals. I read it immediately after reading Gary Klein's Sources of Power, which is an examplar of popular science writing for the public (If you have any interest in human decision-making, I highly recommend it.). But all in all, the research this book is built on is fascinating, but the book left me disappointed.

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond "Pop Science", September 11, 2008

By 

Benjamin Waber (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World (Bradford Books) (Hardcover)

This book goes through the most recent (about last 5 years) research of Prof. Pentland's group in the MIT Media Lab. It's a quick but extremely engaging read, and in contrast to other pop science books like Freakanomics and Predictably Irrational (both of which are interesting reads), Honest Signals has the scientific details of the experiments that it talks about, in the form of a thorough 50-page appendix. For anyone interested in how sensing technology will change business and the sciences or who's interested in learning how people actually interact with each other, this is a must read.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Idiots and Gossip (Plus Other Tales from the Sociometer), January 4, 2009

By 

Geoff Livingston "GL" (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World (Bradford Books) (Hardcover)

Idiots and gossip represent the biggest danger to idea markets and networked intelligence says MIT Media Lab Professor Alex Pentland in his findings, "Honest Signals." Of particular note is that in large groups behavioral dynamics can cause for less than stellar results via bad ideas introduced (idiots) and shared sources that repeat the same information over and over again (gossip). Anyone who has questioned the 2.0 echo chamber or wisdom of crowds can identify with these issues, yet Pentland demonstrates networked intelligence is superior to the individuals.

Honest Signals reveals findings from a new technology called the Sociometer that measure human behavior, including overwhelming proof that humans do not make rational, logical decisions, instead opting for a base networked form of primal signaling amongst ourselves. This empirical evidence proves collaborative use of body language and other signals are more important in communications and decision making than theories of messaging and big man management. Further the findings bulwark the collaborative trends we are seeing in the social web, which brings us back to idiots and gossip.

Anyone who has participated in Twitter or a highly engaged wiki environment can see this networked intelligence at work. And often the wisdom of the crowd can go astray in a bit of a frenzy or simply put, bad group-think. So the question becomes how to improve idea markets for better collaboration, performance and use, an activity the Media Lab, Intel and Hewlett-Packard are all actively trying to solve.

The idiot factor -- introduction of bad ideas -- can easily be weeded out by performance. Someone who cannot deliver good intellectual capital simply loses credibility (idiot image by Geoff Greene).

The gossip factor seems to be much tougher. While "me, too" may count as approval, the sociological problem lies in a variety of societal pressures (cliques, etc.) and subjective mental quirks. One idea spread across many is not many ideas, rather it's still only one alternative and its popularity may be temporal.

For those who lament the echo chamber, we have to be discerning in large distributed environments and community idea markets like the blogosphere and Twitter, respectively. It's important to source ideas and understand which ones come from independent sources and which ones are simply, "me, too" theories.

A couple of tips from Honest Thinking include 1) tight social groups rarely have multiple unique ideas and 2) make sure you use different sources of information than some other friends/acquaintances in the echo chamber. Number two is something I manage diligently in my Google Reader, quickly purging blogs which start miming other voices. You'd be surprised how many top bloggers actually present "unique" posts that in actuality seem to trailing other lesser known, more original thinkers.

Other Findings

Perhaps more relevant for the general communicator are the base sociometer findings, "that a great deal of human behavior is either automatic or determined by unconscious processes." Many, many people in sales and marketing subscribe (including me) to what can be called a emotional sentimentality to decision making. But there's never been a science to it, instead positioning, messaging theories, sales training or "positivity" memes.

Ever walk out of a meeting where you picked up on a piece of information conveyed to the group that was crucial for a decision, but that teammates missed? These "sales skills" or what others have even called voodoo actually demonstrate a sensitivity to the honest signals people are conveying, according to the sociometer's findings.

"If we think about expert poker players again, we see that they are good at recognizing what patterns of play are unfolding, as well as predicting how likely future draws of cards are favorable." - Alex Pentland.

These signals translate across one-on-one meetings, workgroups, and friend circles all the way to large enterprises. Consequentially, great decision making really represents an unconscious ability to digest and extrapolate the signals across diverse groups of people and situations. The "decision maker" is simply tapping the broader experience of the whole rather than sitting atop an ivory tower.

Honest signals also impact our use of communication toolsets and technologies. Pentland argues many of our tools have yet to be designed for the trues signaling we engage in as human beings, and that hopefully in the future, they will evolve to better harness our idea markets and networked intelligence.

This book is simply fascinating. I could (and may) blog quite a bit more on it. I highly suggest any business leader or communicator who wants bleeding edge intelligence read this book.