Dr. Cat Hicks
We have measured something researchers call beliefs about "role-based communal affordances" in my lab or in other words: how much do software developers think that the job of being a software developer includes helping other people and improving their lives? And the answer is A LOT of professional developers think this is important and see this as part of their identity.
People's beliefs about the communal affordances of software work is an undermeasured, underappreciated important thing imo.
Dr. Cat Hicks
What message does it send when we use language about developers and describe software jobs as being asocial? What does it do to the health of people in this industry when we discourage collaboration activities? Does the heavy emphasis on "autonomy" and "agility" ever interfere with the valuing of communal work?
I ponder a lot of questions. What I know, from our empirical data so far, is that real professional developers' beliefs in real life challenge a lot of our strongly-held stereotypes.
Dr. Cat Hicks
I want to look more into this because you know why? People's beliefs about whether or not a specific job in this world HAS communal affordances steer a lot of early pathway decisions.
For example, interventions that draw early learners' attention to the possibility of social and communal applications of STEM work drive up interest and even foster *recovery* when belonging is threatened (Belanger et al., 2020)
Dr. Cat Hicks
"From a social structural perspective, aspects of the social role—indeed, the nature of the role activities themselves—can signal belonging."
"The affordances of particular interest here are opportunities to fulfill communal goals, such as altruism or collaboration. These perceived opportunities uniquely predict interest in STEM fields, relative to other careers (Diekman et al., 2017). " (Belanger et al)
Dr. Cat Hicks
We talk a lot about the risks of burnout and uneven responsibility in invisible work (as we described in our Visibility secondary study in the Dev thriving paper; Hicks, Lee & Ramsey, 2023!), and social and communal affordances can often be invisible work, but NOT always. There is an important other side which is the restorative possibilities of communal affordances in how people create and reinforce each others' role-based belonging.
Luis Villa
@grimalkina wow, it never crossed my mind that this is a thing you could poll about. And it’s absolutely part of why I love software and open in particular.
Dr. Cat Hicks
@luis_in_brief welcome to the fabulous world of exploring the mechanisms of psychological constructs and belief systems that inform our social decision making :) the measure instrument is only the first step, the evidence is also well accompanied by field work, diverse sampling, and research designs. Not only do we study this stuff but we study it with so much effort! (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0146167219897181)
Luis Villa
@grimalkina I have something like a minor in political psychology, mostly in authoritarianism, so I’m very comfortable with that idea generally! But actual life took me in a somewhat different direction so I’m curious to dig in, thanks for sharing here!
Shauna GM
@luis_in_brief @grimalkina Minoring in authoritarianism sounds like the punchline to a joke although I majored in prosocial and antisocial behavior so glass houses, etc
Luis Villa
@shauna @grimalkina the horrible punchline was all us Clinton-era college kids with very earnest “nope, won’t happen again here” and the prof going “yeahhhhhh about that”.
Jesse T. Alford
@grimalkina wait are people out here describing “agility” as something you get at the expense of community, as opposed to like, by cultivating community?
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