The behavior we think we implement at random is actually stable over time and between different tasks: this can have repercussions in data security.
If they ask you to imagine a random number between 1 and 10, it is likely that you choose the 7; If a color, it is easy for it to be blue. We are notoriously little skilled to make apparently random choicesdon’t think. But each of us is – just ascertained a study – in a highly predictable and recognizable wayboth over time and between one task and another. The behavior we follow when we are asked to choose at random is actually very stable, and this could be a problem in the fields in which we want to avoid being predictable, for example in the processes of protection of information and sensitive data.
Do you bet they guess? Tale Boger, a scientist specialized in visual and statistical perception of the Johns Hopkins University (United States), subjected together with colleagues 143 volunteers to two separate tasks: select a random number from 1 to 9 and choose one between 9 boxes in a grid of 3 cells for 3. For each of the tasks, the participants had to make 250 random choices. Boger and colleagues realized that it was possible to use a computational model to predict which boxes each person would have chosen starting from the choice made of numbers, and vice versa. Although the volunteers should let themselves be guided by the case, there were more resonances between the two tasks than when believed.
A year later, when the participants were asked to recur and make the choices again (only 53 have lent themselves again to the challenge), their decisions were still predictable. The computational model proved to be more accurate than 10% in predicting the moves of each respect – in fact – in the pure chance.
Activate mode: At random. The study, in pre-publishing on Psyarxivsuggests that the human brain implements a predefined scheme when it receives the command to make a random choice. This could reflect individual differences in cognitive controlthe ability to control the way we process information and behavior to be implemented in view of a goal.
We are not hacker -proof … But beyond the interest in neuroscience, this unexpected “stability” in the way (not) we make random choices may have repercussions in the areas of science in which we try to predict how people will behave. For example, in the game theory (The mathematical theory that describes how people behave in the scenarios in which they find themselves competing for a winning or sharing something, widely used in economics research), or in the field of data security.
The high predictability of individuals in time and between one context and the other could also make the passwords we generate more predictable than we have, the encryption of data and the online navigation habits, just to give some examples. Knowing the limits of our brain could serve to entrust some of these hardware, or intelligence, non -human tasks.
