Academics in Britain and the US have targeted millions of people by creating ad campaigns on Facebook based on psychological traits perceived from a single “like”.
The work, which was carried out by unnamed companies, aimed to demonstrate the effect of mass psychological persuasion and how the smallest expressions of preferences can be used to influence behavioural patterns.
One of the experiments targeted more than 3 million women aged 18-40 in the UK with adverts for an online beauty retailer. Over 10,000 women clicked on the ads and 390 purchased products from the retailer.
Further campaigns for gaming apps had similar results.
According to the researchers, targeted campaigns boosted clicks by up to 40% and sales by up to 50% compared with untargeted adverts.
In order to conduct the research Sandra Matz, a computational social scientist at Columbia Business School in New York City teamed up with researchers at the University of Cambridge, who had already created millions of anonymous Facebook personality profiles based on items they had liked.
The researchers were then able to identify introverts from extroverts based on single likes, and aimed their adverts accordingly.
For instance, data reveals that a like on Lady Gaga’s Facebook page generally shows the mark of an extrovert, whereas users who like Stargate’s page tend to be introverts.
“We wanted to provide some scientific evidence that psychological targeting works and say this is what we can do simply by looking at your Facebook likes. This is the way we can influence behaviour,” Matz told the Guardian.
“[Mass persuasion] has the potential for abuse where you exploit weaknesses in a person’s character to make them do things they don’t want to do. We want policymakers to focus on the positive uses, for example, by helping people to save, get a pension, or lead healthy lives. If you just shut down this technology, you would lose so much potential.”
However, the work has raised some concerns as people believe that in the run-up to the EU referendum voters might have been unfairly influenced by social media propaganda tactics.
The UK Information Commissioner’s Office is investigating whether these accusations are true and a report is expected by the end of the year.
“Political campaigns [are] probably somewhere you don’t want it to be used,” Matz added.
“We want to open it up for public discussion so people can have an informed discussion about what we want to do with our technology.”
