How Technology Subconsciously Manipulates Your Vote

You Might Be Influenced By The Very Device You’re Holding Right Now

What if your thoughts, actions, and vote were being influenced by the very device you’re reading this on right now?

As the midterms approach in the USA, I thought it would be interesting to delve into the way the technology we use shapes the decisions voters make. What I found out was terrifying.

The Search Engine Manipulation Effect

Would you believe that you would be more likely to vote for someone just because they ranked higher in a Google Search?

What we’re talking about here is a means of mind control on a massive scale that there is no precedent for in human history

That’s a quote from Robert Epstein, a research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research. He ran a study that found a link between the ranking of politicians on search engines and the likelihood someone would be swayed to vote for them.

We’ve grown accustomed to trusting the first few results of web pages, Google themselves define these results as “the most relevant and useful”. Unfortunately, we carry that same sentiment over to politicians.

The politicians who rank higher in search aren’t usually the best politicians, they’re the most controversial ones. And that rank means we subconsciously trust them more.

To test how the internet can affect our opinions, Epstein created a fake search engine called “Kadoodle” that was biased to rank results for one candidate over the other. Obviously, people would end up clicking on the top ones more often.

You’d think that this quick search wouldn’t make much of a difference, but biased search results increased the number of undecided voters choosing the candidate that ranked higher in the search by 48%.