EMB is the creation and an ongoing project by Daryl Baier that was built for fun as a creative space to test new research methods and share interesting findings. The research is designed to increase our understanding of human complexity including developing a greater understanding of public opinion on a broad range of social and political issues.
Education: I am currently enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. I received my BA in Political Science at UNL. My area of study is American Politics and Bio-Politics. My work is focused on cognitive and behavioral research in Political Science with the integration of political psychology, cognition, perception, biopsychology, evolutionary psychology, and behavioral neuroscience.
I have selected a wide range of content for a combination of reasons. Most importantly, I really love history and quizzes. I feel quizzes can be entertaining and educational without requiring someone to spend days researching the complexity of a topic. I try to find topics that tend to be less understood by most people. Topics in the news easily catch my attention and curiosity. I tend to find a big question on the topic and for amusement I start going into research mode on the history and lesser understood components that add to the complexity of the topic. Along the way I tend to identify unusual and interesting facts on my information journey which I enjoy making into a short quiz. Since I am seeking obscure information they can be challenging to answer, so you should not beat yourself up if you find some of the quizzes difficult.
Rather than write a boring paper on topics, I find that engaging people with a quick and fun quiz makes it more entertaining and educational. A good example is the two quizzes about the history of the political parties. I try to remain non partisan but I knew I could challenge the most devoted Republicans and Democrats with historical facts about their parties. It is not to aggitate or insult people but rather engage people with new information and provide insight about common misperceptions of an identity that they closely associate themselves with. What I find the most interesting is that people who have the strongest attachment to their political identity tend to get the least amount correct about thier own party on the quizzes. This leads to a more interesting question that this website wants to further explore.
I am fascinated with human complexity and I want to inform our participants about our findings along this journey. This is what I think is the most interesting aspect of our website features is to examine if there are interesting patterns in the data about how some people prefer one thing and if that is correlated with another seemingly unrelated thing (a statistically similar mutual relationship or connection between two items). I want to ask seemingly random and crazy questions to see if those that prefer pancakes over waffles also prefer hybrids over trucks. This is an odd and comical example (which we will probably explore LOL) but these seemingly unrelated similarities can lead to more complex findings about human cognition and behavior.
One of my favorite examples was an accidental case in a lab where a powder substance accidentally got stirred into the air. One of the lab workers complained about the very bitter taste while the other lab worker reported not tasting anything. The two people found this odd but someone brilliantly thought about how they both have very different political views. This triggered a curiosity about a potential correlation between these two seemingly unrelated items. It was later discovered that the powder compound (now used in taste strips to identify if you have a specific gene) required a specific genetic sequence in a person in order to taste it. Later researchers found that those who can taste the compound tend to have higher sensitivity to a disgust response. Years later this was examined deeper and a relationship was found between greater disgust sensitivity and some political views. This was a famous case that has inspired recent research in Political Science exploring if conservatives and liberals may in fact see, smell, and taste the world in very different ways. I encourage you to explore this amazing new field of research exploring the relationship of genetics and attitudes (including politics). This is one great example how curiosity can lead to greater insight into human complexity.
Absolutely, many of our fun findings and features are built using ongoing Data Science. An important aspect of our website features is the unique relationship we build with our members on a shared scientific journey. Myself and many people who work in Data Analytics share a strong mutual concern for internet privacy. There are many large companies who are operating unchecked and collecting enormous amounts of data on users without their knowledge or consent (despite some using an insane mile long uncomprehendable consent form). I encourage you to recognize the alarms and look into the movement that is educating the public and advocating congress to begin putting in measures to protect user privacy. You should demand Congress act now to give back your ownership and rights to how your personal data is used. The EU has taken big steps in this effort and the United States government is completely behind in this effort. I hope our site can contribute to greater public awareness about how powerful data can be and the potential dangers if left unchecked on how it is used. While we use data for analysis we strive to use it as an educational tool where our participants learn and understand how data can be used. My goal is to have fun with data in a scientific approach but I want our members who contribute to our research to be mutual benifactors of our findings. Many of our surveys we use are for educational purposes while others are used to examine for potential new correlations. I am motivated to find interesting new relationships in the data in order to potentially publish the results in Academic Journals. We typically have users complete many of the surveys before we can share the research question or any findings because revealing any specific details can unintentionally influence how you respond to the survey questions. Additionally we may be looking for correlation between the questions in two different surveys. We will always keep individual member information and responses concealed from our posted findings as we are always looking at the much larger trends in the data using hundreds of respondents combined. We are not interested in examining individuals but rather identifying similarities between a large number of people to give the data meaningful interpretations. We keep the main findings viewable to only the people who voluntarily participate as "our members" in the surveys and personality tests. We will post fun findings on our site but more indepth findings will be shared only to participants including posting some new interesting findings in your private members section. I believe Science should be built on a mutual foundation of trust between the participant and researcher. This site will remain committed to this principle as we seek to entertain, educate, and explore human complexity. Thank you for your trust and your important contribution to these scientific efforts.
