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Course: Social media literacy > Unit 3
Lesson 4: What makes persuasive technology so powerful?What makes persuasive technology so powerful?
A race between technology and our brains, and technology is winning
What makes persuasive technology so powerful?
To navigate the complex world around us, our brains have to make fast decisions. We have evolved shortcuts for making decisions, for everything from the way we process information to the way we relate to others around us. These shortcuts are meant to keep us alive and healthy. For example:
- We pay more attention to fearful, dangerous stimuli to stay safe.
- We seek out sweet and fatty foods for their readily available energy.
- We remember things that hurt us more than things that help us so we can predict future consequences.
- We tend to follow the popular opinion of those around us to build stronger communities around shared ideas.
These traits served our ancestors well over millions of years. But now, more humans than ever have ready access to food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. We have gone from foraging for calories to being surrounded by cheap sugar, from navigating relationships with a small tribe to navigating online worlds with billions of participants. And yet our psychology is still shaped by these traits.
Persuasive technology is honed to tap into our psychology and push us towards certain behaviors. For example:
- Notifications (like vibrations, buzzing, red dots, flashing lights, etc.) mimic naturally occurring signs of danger to pull us into apps.
- The possibility of new comments or "likes" keeps us compulsively monitoring for updates, seeking feelings of pleasure and reward.
- Design features like infinite scroll (where when you reach the bottom of the page and more content loads automatically) keep us continuously engaged.
Manipulating weaknesses in human psychology isn’t new. Con artists and magicians have long known these vulnerabilities and used them to take advantage of us. Advertisers, too, have exploited deep truths about our psychology to influence our behavior. The food industry has long hijacked our survival instincts, addicting us to fat, salt, and sugar mixed in just the right proportions, profiting massively while throwing our bodies wildly out of balance.
Persuasive technology is up against our human physiology, which changes very slowly, over hundreds of thousands of years. Meanwhile, our technological capabilities have been growing exponentially since the computer was invented in 1946.
Processing power has increased over 1 trillion times between 1956 and 2015 and continues to trend upward exponentially. As it increases, so too does the ability to model and manipulate human minds. Advanced algorithms compare our behavior with the behavior of others like us to discover how to best influence us. Apps then sell that access to companies or individuals who want to influence behavior, opinions, or votes.
Persuasive technology constantly learns more about us and pairs that information with compelling and creative design ideas to influence our behavior more effectively each day.
We can protect ourselves from time to time through self-awareness and willpower, but if we keep putting our brains in competition with these continually improving persuasive technologies, we’re destined to be exploited.
Want to join the conversation?
Manipulating weaknesses in human psychology isn’t new. Con artists and magicians have long known these vulnerabilities and used them to take advantage of us. i agree what says(2 votes)
Just payatction and then you won't have a problom(0 votes)