9. The Cyranoid

Cyranoids are "people who do not speak thoughts originating in their own central nervous system: Rather, the words they speak originate in the mind of another person who transmits these words to the cyranoid by radio transmission".[1]

Following these studies, Milgram concluded that the cyranoid method held promise as a social psychological research tool, as it allows one to separate the form of a social actor (their physical nature) from the content (words) they produce in interactive social settings. Among other things, therefore, the cyranoid method serves as a means of exploring phenomena such as racial, gender, and age-based stereotyping, as one can dynamically test how a single source is perceived and interacted with differently on the basis of their communicating through a variety of physically-differentiated source-types.

9. The Cyranoid

Download

Though initially ignored, researchers have recently begun re-exploring the cyranoid concept in scientific settings. In 2014, Kevin Corti and Alex Gillespie, social psychologists at the London School of Economics, published the first replications of Milgram's original pilots (Milgram himself never formally published his work with the technique).[3][4][5] Robb Mitchell has explored cyranoids as an experiential learning tool within the classroom (having children shadow for teachers during teaching exercises).[6] Cyranoids have also been used in installation art to explore social experiences whereby people encounter those familiar to them through the bodies of strangers.[7]

More recently the cyranoid method has been extended to study how humans interact with artificial agents such as chat bots. A speech shadower who speaks the words of an artificial agent is called an echoborg.[8] When people interact with a covert echoborg they tend to engage in more intersubjective effort.[9] The cyranoid and echoborg methods can be used to mix and match bodies and cognition sources opening up a broad range of research questions.[10]

Corti, Kevin (2015)Developing the cyranoid method of mediated interpersonal communication in a social psychological context: applications in person perception, human-computer interaction, and first-personresearch. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

38c6e68cf9