Desires, Relations, Intimacy & Exploitation: An Introductory Mind Genomics Cartography

Abstract

We present two methods-oriented studies on sexuality, one dealing with the discussion of sexuality in the context of a relationship, the second with the societal protection of sex workers. Both studies used consumer respondents to evaluate systematically varied combinations of messages about the topic, the combinations created by experimental design, following the method of Mind Genomics. Study 1 on discussions of sexual intimacy presents Mind Genomics to understand the way people process information, their criteria for decision-making, and the nature of possibly easy-to-understand mind-sets, i.e., different criteria of importance assigned to the same pieces of information. Study 2 on the protection and recourse given to legal workers shows how to assess the interaction between person and situation as drivers of judgments and drivers of engagement. Both studies point to the emerging science of Mind Genomics as an easy, rapid, and cost-effective ways to create archival databases, to introduce new ways of thinking, and to democratize research world-wide, respectively. Introduction During the past three decades the focus of researchers has steadily increased on issues involving intimacy, specifically sexual intimacy between consenting partners (love, romance), as well as sexual intimacy as a business (sex workers.) Sexuality in its many manifestations has always attracted research because of its centrality in daily life, but as society has evolved, issues of sexuality have become intertwined with emotions, with public health (e.g., sexually transmitted disease), and finally with issues of the law (e.g., prostitution and the issues revolving around sex workers.) The topics of love, sexuality, sexual exploitations, and societal reactions each have spawned enormous literatures. Table 1 shows the number of ‘hits’ for Google® and for Google Scholar®, for each of these topics, at the time of this writing, December 2019, No set of studies can hope to be comprehensive, given the long history of the study of sexuality, the many manifestations in daily life, and the many cultures as well as stages of individual development that must be considered. Rather, we introduce here a new approach to the study of sexuality, the science of Mind Genomics, designed to take small snapshots of a topic, focus in depth on a specific, limited topic, and work with small, affordable samples of respondents. The worldview of Mind Genomics involves a small, limited topic, investigating the patterns of decision making within that topic. Rather than emerging out of the history of the hypothetico-deductive method, isolating a variable and studying that variable in an experiment, Mind Genomics proceeds in the reverse direction. One might think of the Mind Genomics researcher as a cartographer faced with a new land. The cartographer measures the relevant variables of a topographical area, deduces the nature of the structure below, and maps the land. The cartographer creates maps, not theories. In the case of Mind Genomics, the ‘land’ is the world of sexuality. The cartography of this paper deals with the reactions to issues of sexual intimacy (one set of experiments), and reactions to issues of sex workers (another set of experiments.) Table 1. Number of citations dealing with sex and its ramifications. Topic Citations– Google® Citations– Google Scholar® Love 18 billion 3.34 million Sexuality 80 million 2.47 million Sexual exploitation 72 million 1.03 million Societal response to sexual exploitation 59 million 0.20 million Howard Moskowitz (2020) Desires, Relations, Intimacy & Exploitation: An Introductory Mind Genomics Cartography Psychol J Res Open, Volume 2(1): 2–12, 2020 Exploring two topics of sex using Mind Genomics to generate insights and hypotheses The topic of sexual behavior spans a wide range of topics, from the physical to the emotional to the legal, and to the societal. It is impossible to cover even a very small fraction of the topics with a set of experiments or surveys. The strategy of this paper is to demonstrate how the emerging science of Mind Genomics can generate an affordable, powerful database at the start of a research initiative, using simple ideas, simple thinking, consumer research, and powerful analyses, meaningful even with samples that are traditionally considered ‘small’. The emerging science of Mind Genomics (Moskowitz & Gofman, 2007) [1], traces its intellectual heritage to the systematized thinking using experimental design to structure the test stimuli, as well as to sociology and consumer research for transforming the ideas into questions to be answered, and finally to the Socratic method to create the system as an inductive knowledge-development technique, easily applied in practice Experimental design Experimental design allows a researcher to understand the effects of a variable, either tested along in ‘splendid isolation’ or tested as part of a mixture (Box, Hunter & Hunter, 1978) [2]. Mind Genomics deals with the ordinary situation, wherein a person is presented with a combination of ideas, as the typical situation of daily life. The person responds to the combination, making a decision. But just what specific component of the combination or set of components ‘drive’ that decision? Experimental design sets up efficient combinations of independent variables, messages or elements in the language of Mind Genomics. It is the response to these systematically created mixtures, which, through regression reveals, quite directly the contribution of each Message or Element to the response. The response, in turn, is what the respondent answers. Sociology and consumer research These social science disciplines rely upon the responses of people to questions about behavior, or upon the measurement of the behavior of people in situations, i.e., upon attitude versus upon behavior, respectively. Where possible a meaningful behavioral measure may be better than an attitude, although the term ‘meaningful’ is important as a qualifier. Over almost a century there has been a subtle current of belief that implicit measures are better than explicit ones, e.g., that EEG (brain waves) or GSR (activation) or pupil behavior (dilation, pupil motion) somehow are better than simple attitudinal ratings because the former are more objective, more biological (Boring, 1929) [3]. The foregoing use of ‘meaningful’ is not what is meant here. Rather, the term ‘meaningful’ is used in the sense that the measure to be meaningful must be a direct correlate of the mind of the person, whether person in society or an ordinary citizen faced with a choice. Mind Genomics uses the responses to combinations of messages, i.e., combinations of elements as the meaningful measure, since a great deal of behavior in everyday life is responses to mixtures. Mind Genomics goes the additional step by creating combinations of these messages, presenting them to respondents, measuring the reactions, and then estimating the contribution of each message. The Socratic Method The approach is grounded empiricism, not in the hypotheticodeductive method. There is no hypothesis to be tested. Rather, there is a topic to be studied. The topic of interest is presented to the researcher, who must create four questions which ‘tell a story’ about the topic. The questions are not necessarily final, but rather represent the way the topic is thought about, either those who are grounded in the topic, or even novices with no idea at all, so-called ‘newbies’. The four questions each motivate four answers, or a total of 16 answers, as shown in the next sections. The researcher then combines these answers into small vignettes, obtains responses to the vignettes, and shows how the different answers shed light on the topic. The best way to show the Mind Genomics method is through a case history, dealing with a topic relevant to an individual, or even beyond the individual to a group, and to society. This paper focuses on two aspects of sexual behavior, the first dealing with discussions of sexual intimacy and disease protection between consenting partners, the second dealing with protection of the ‘sex’ worker. These are but two of the perhaps hundreds of topics in the rainbow of topics in sexuality. We show how a one-day experiment can produce data for each topic, making it feasible to explore hundreds of topics about sexuality in the time frame of a year, with affordable, rapid, insightful and archival data. Study 1 – Discussinag disease prevention between two consenting & emotionally-involved partners A great deal has been written about sexual relations between consenting partners, from issues to measurements (e.g., Fisher et. al., 2013; Montesi, et. al., 2013; Stephenson, et. al., 2010). [4, 5, 6] The topics range from the emotions felt by the participants to the behavior of adolescents versus older individuals, and on to the issues caused by the ravages of sexually transmitted disease (Harvey et al., 2016; Katz et al., 2000; Peplau et. al., 2007; Widman et. al., 2006). [7, 8, 9, 10] Our focus in this experiment is the couple’s discussion of issues around the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases using methods under their control. The study was motivated by author Ortiz’s plan to sponsor a campaign to reduce sexually transmitted disease. Method The Mind Genomics study begins with the creation of the four questions and the four answers to each question. These appear in Table 2 and were created by author Ortiz as part of a campaign against sexually transmitted diseases. The important thing to realize from Table 2 is that the study does not exhaust the topic. Indeed, Mind Genomics studies are not designed as single, exhaustive treatments of a subject, treatments which generate a large volume of disparate information. Rather, Table 2 shows a preliminary attempt Howard Moskowitz (2020) Desires, Relations, Intimacy & Exploitation: An Introductory Mind Genomics Cartography Psychol J Res Open,