Targeting The Psyche
In today’s information age, Silicon Valley’s reputation in society has shifted from a positive to a negative light. Most people are aware that social media platforms collect and harvest user data for profit, both fiscally and socially. That is typically visible in the form of advertisements. However, I was surprised to learn that Cambridge Analytica took a different approach with the data they obtained. They used psychographic microtargeting, a method that describes human traits based on psychological attributes. By reaching users’ pathos, rather than their material preferences, tech companies can create a dangerous system that allows them to justify directly controlling and influencing users’ psyche through targeted ads.
Cambridge Analytica successfully hacked millions of users’ Facebook data, created a psychological profile of them, and sold this data to Trump’s political campaign. The goal? To Make America Great Again.
After illegally obtaining this Big Data set, Cambridge Analytica gave users a score for each category from The Big Five personality test: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Subsequently, they gave each individual a rating, and created an algorithm to group homogenous people, selecting specific content that would resonate with that user’s feelings and beliefs. For example, Cambridge Analytica’s former CEO Alexander Nix stated, “a more agreeable person may respond better to an ad that emphasizes family values” (Resnick 1). In attaching personality traits to the user’s data, they bridged the gap between the profile and the human behind it. While the person behind the user is still the one exercising their right to vote, are they really the ones voting when their subconsciousness is being manipulated?
Allowing a computer to subconsciously influence human decisions on such a large quantity of users is incredibly dangerous. As Castell states, “the way people think determines the fate of norms and values on which societies are constructed” (Castell 1). When this manipulation is successful, it will create a large army, allowing whoever acquires these data systems to change the groups’ beliefs. Although Cambridge Analytica shut down after the scandal, they still created the idea of psychographic microtargeting that other third parties may implement.
While we, as the users, are choosing to opt-in on platforms such as Facebook, it is important to become aware of this idea that your thoughts are being influenced by these applications, whether that be in the form of a video emphasizing family values or in an advertisement for shoes.
