Facebook uses psychological tests on its users — problem or progress?
In early 2014, Facebook decided to manipulate the news-feeds of over half a million randomly selected members as part of a psychological test designed to measure the spread of emotion on social media. An academic paper written in conjunction with university researchers reported the results of that one week experiment in which Facebook manipulated the number of positive and negatives items appearing on each participant’s news-feed. What was discovered was that moods are contagious, with those seeing positive items responding by posting more positive posts, and vice versa.
However, judging by the blow back of this study, Facebook’s characterization of its members as ‘participants’ is clearly a stretch. Technically, Facebook did nothing illegal, with the social media giant claiming that its members gave a blanket consent to being tested on by agreeing to the terms and conditions upon creation of their online profile. Others argue that Facebook crossed an ethical boundary by not explicitly asking its randomly selected members for permission.
Facebook isn’t the first or only company to analyze and manipulate the data of its members, with Google and Yahoo being among other culprits. The question we must ask ourselves, though, is the following: does this new way of conducting psychological testing represent a problem or progress?
Here is my take on this question. If we grant the premise that the tool of psychological testing is immensely beneficial to the advancement of humankind when used correctly, then we must acknowledge the huge potential of this social media based method of testing. First, performing empirical research suddenly becomes easier. Being able to instantly choose from a database of millions of diverse people from all cultures represents an extremely cost effective way of choosing a large, random test sample. Furthermore, web-based social media tests make it easier to study psychological phenomena that are hard to study in the traditional laboratory setting. For example, the long term evolution of groups is particularly hard to study in a controlled way using traditional testing methods, because of how hard it is to bring a large number of subjects back to the laboratory multiple times. The use of the internet makes testing these psychological phenomena easy and fast, and social media platforms, with a database of millions of potential participants to choose from and monitor, simplifies and accelerates this further.
However, it is clear that despite the clear benefits of what companies like Facebook are doing, we must proceed with caution. The psychological tests chosen by these large companies must be chosen with care, and the research must be in the best interest of its users or society as a whole. Furthermore, explicit consent must be obtained from the potential participants before the study can begin. New laws must be introduced to regulate ethical considerations regarding this promising new way of applying psychological tests, or we risk a pandemic of abuse and misuse of psychological testing at the hands of these large companies.
Word Count — 488 words
Sources:
http://www.apa.org/science/leadership/bsa/internet/internet-report.aspx
