You are Being Watched: Psychological Targeting

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You are Being Watched: Psychological Targeting

🔥 A recent, technologically advanced form of target marketing, or in fact targeting in general, is psychological targeting.

Historic Background: Psychographic Target Marketing

Psychological Targeting is somewhat similar to the earlier Psychographic Target Marketing. However, the latter was aimed at influencing SEGMENTS of people (customers, prospects, voters) based on their INTUITIVELY supposed lifestyle choices, attitudes, and opinions (as supposed by marketers). This practice does little harm and is quite helpful in targeting offers for products or services to audiences that need them.

Psychological Targeting (PT )

OK, what about this new approach? Prof. Matz recently explains that PT builds on VALIDATED (measured, exact) PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTS that capture fundamental differences in how INDIVIDUAL people think, feel, and behave.

How does Psychological Targeting Work?

Central to PT is the use of "psychological constructs".
❗It's important to understand that these psychological constructs enable an exchange of information about you between the party collecting it and various 3rd parties who can use it in a different environment than where the info was found and for whatever purpose they deem appropriate. The most popular "PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSTRUCT" being used in research and practice is the so called "OCEAN model":
O - Openness to experience
C - Conscientiousness
E - Extroversion
A - Agreeableness
N - Neuroticism

These "Big 5" dimensions are collected about each individual person from the different apps you use, then stored using big data, and analyzed using algorithms and AI by companies like Facebook, Google and TikTok, and are then made available to buyers of this information.

How is Psychological Targeting Used?

PT is basically applied for 2 main purposes:
1. WHAT YOU FIND - Predict people's preferences for products, services, brands, political views, anything. As a simple example, extroverts are more interested in spending money in social activities, while introverts could be more interested in buying books.
2. HOW YOU CAN BE INFLUENCED - Predict people's preferences for marketing messages and communication styles.

Discussion

Using PT, your individual psychological preferences are being collected and can be used to influence you in places and situations you don't expect, without your real consent, without you knowing how it works, and without any possibility to find out what is known about you, influence it, disagree with it, and delete it.
In my opinion, there are major ethical and safety concerns for INDIVIDUALS and threats for SOCIETY as a whole, and little or no benefits at all (that is except for the big tech companies themselves).
❓Do you think it's time for regulators to step up against PT or do you see benefits for individuals and society after all?

Sources:
Matz S.C., Kosinski M., Nave G., Stillwell D.J. (2017), "Psychological targeting as an effective approach to digital mass persuasion", Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 114, 12714–12719.
Van der Linden, S. (2023), "Weapons of Mass Persuasion: Tracing the Story of Psychological Targeting on Social Media", Behavioral Scientist.
Matz S., "What Psychological Targeting Can Do", HBR Mar-Apr 2023, pp. 124-133.

		Comments by date▼ Comments by rating Rating
		1
	Individual Targeting Is psychological targeting the same as individual targeting?

		1 Jaap de Jonge Editor, Netherlands
	Psychological Targeting versus Individual Targeting Good question. I think they're not the same. Rather, we should see PT as one, special form of individual targeting. How does PT differ from other individual forms of targeting? - It's based on creating and using individual psychological profiles (constructs) from each individual at a mass scale. - And because it works through a standardized psychological model (like OCEAN), it can be assembled from many sources (apps) and then used by other parties in other situations for other purposes than where the profile was originally harvested from and for. Compare PT with a sales person. For example an account manager selling some machinery. If they're any good in selling, they will deploy some basic psychology too in order to convince their potential clients: Is my client in a hurry? Why? Is he worried? Why? Does he likes me? How can I make him like me? Etcetera. However, a comforting thought for the client of talking to an account manager is that the psychological information and knowledge about him is only used for the purpose of selling this machinery to him, normally stays within the head of the account manager, and probably only for a short while. These reassurances do not exist in PT.

		0 Paramathmuni srinivas Kumar India
	Pychological Targeting is Inevitable in the Age of Internet It is not possible to not to know about individual preferences in the Internet age and it even got penetrated into villages in India. These psychological preferences are dependent on the tendencies and refining of tendencies lurking at different layers of human personality I suppose. In the scale of human excellence I think setting a benchmark and targeting it can be useful. For example, as far as human excellence is concerned in academic area in India, local universities can set IITs as benchmark, IITs can set MIT or Harvard, MIT or Harvard can emulate the way a yogi lives in India...🙂.

		0 Maurice Hogarth Consultant, United Kingdom
	Targeting Foundation Mindset For me there is a distinction between: - The use of psychologically based targeting for sales, i.e. PTM (based on collected data of preferences etc.) to enable adverts for products tailored to both individuals & organisations, - Psychological Targeting (PT), as described here, which seems to be about taking the PTM approach to the next level with the use of technology etc. However, there does seem to be similarities with the concept underlying the 'Foundation' series of novels by Isaac Asimov. In these the mathematics of sociology uses the statistical laws of mass action to predict the behaviours of LARGE populations. The PT process seems to describe the potential for a platform for the manipulation (for positive or negative/ better or worse) of mass-think in populations. We seem to be seeing some examples of it at work in political arenas around the world now.