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Using the Internet to Study Human Universals

2010· book-chapter· en· W2892751877 on OpenAlexaff
Gad Saad

Bibliographic record

VenueIGI Global eBooks · 2010
Typebook-chapter
Languageen
FieldBusiness, Management and Accounting
TopicConsumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification
Canadian institutionsConcordia University
Fundersnot available
KeywordsConsumption (sociology)Problem of universalsSociologyNexus (standard)ImitationEpistemologyPsychologySocial psychologySocial scienceComputer science

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Many human preferences, choices, emotions, and actions occur in universally similar manners because they are rooted in our common biological heritage. As such, irrespective of whether individuals are Peruvian, French, or Togolese, they are likely to share commonalities as a result of their shared Darwinian histories. In the current article, I provide a brief overview of how the Internet is a powerful tool for investigating such human universals. Given my work at the nexus of evolutionary theory and consumption, I begin with an example from marketing. Few marketing scholars are versed in evolutionary theory and related biological formalisms (Saad, 2007a; Saad, 2008a). As such, they generally view the environment as the key driver in shaping consumption patterns. This is part and parcel of the blank slate view of the human mind (Pinker, 2002), which purports that humans are born with empty minds that are subsequently filled via a wide range of socialization forces (e.g., parents, advertising content, or movies). Given that marketing scholars rely heavily on the expansive shoulders of socialization in explaining consumption, they are strong proponents of cultural relativism namely the notion that cultures need to be investigated from an emic perspective. Hence, marketers spend much of their efforts cataloging endless crosscultural differences, seldom recognizing that there are numerous commonalities shared by consumers around the world.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.003
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.004
Threshold uncertainty score0.015

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.003
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0030.003
Science and technology studies0.0010.006
Scholarly communication0.0040.008
Open science0.0000.002
Research integrity0.0010.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0040.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.071
GPT teacher head0.301
Teacher spread0.230 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreMethods

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations1
Published2010
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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