Ever sent an indiscreet selfie? Disclosed private data online? Agreed to terms and conditions without reading them through? If you have, Leslie John knows the reason why.
John, a professor at Harvard Business School, studies interactions that encourage disclosure. In one experiment, she sold cookies on the street in exchange for personal information. The contract people were given told them their data would be distributed without their permission. But the form was really long and complicated, so most people signed it anyway. Over the course of the day three hundred and eighty gave up their personal information in exchange for a cookie.
“This isn’t all that unusual,” says John. “We agree to similar contracts all the time. In the abstract we say we care about privacy and I believe us, but when push comes to shove we do something very different.”
There is a large gap between what we say about disclosure and what we do. John calls this discrepancy “the privacy paradox.”
The reason for this paradox? According to John, it stems from the abstract nature of privacy. “Because privacy is an abstract concept,” she says, “the economic value can’t be pinpointed, so the psychological value is equally vague. Pair that with something immediate and tangible like a cookie and we’ll often be very forthcoming.”
Through her research, John has uncovered numerous examples where arbitrary behavioural cues persuade us to divulge personal information. When we’re told that other people have given up their data, we’re more likely to share ourselves. When we’re “primed” with tame questions – ”have you eaten meat, fish or poultry?” – that make confessions seem meaningless, we’re more likely to answer when intrusive questions follow.
In other cases, the privacy paradox encourages us to act in the opposite way you’d expect. Clunky websites written in Comic Sans are more likely to misuse our data – but because we don’t take them seriously, we divulge personal information easily.
A study John performed asked subjects highly personal questions – including whether they’d ever driven after drinking – on a very official-looking website and a dodgy-looking one. Overwhelmingly, people were more likely to share their secrets with the latter: in case of drunk driving, 30 to 17 per cent respectively.
“Sharing digitally is so foreign,” says John. “We know how to communicate face-to-face, we’re good at navigating that, but when we share online the standard rules don’t apply any more. And sometimes they’re the exact opposite.”
Is there anything we can do about it? John isn’t sure. “Just being aware won’t work,” she says. And although properly timed information – like the Drunk Text Saviour app, which asks late night texters if they’re sure they want to send – could help, such measures seem unlikely to be adopted by big tech companies who specialise in data collection.
The study of privacy is also the study of disclosure. So does John ever worry her work is being used by unscrupulous companies who want to persuade people to share? “I don’t,” she laughs. “It’s just that I’m very good at denial.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
