Sandra Matz

<article-ideainbrief class="article-ideainbrief">
 <h4 class="ideainbrief-title">Idea in Brief</h4>
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  <h5>The Opportunity</h5>
  <p>Psychological targeting—the practice of influencing people’s behavior through interventions aimed at personality traits—has come of age as a marketing tool, thanks to an explosion in data that provides insight into consumers’ psyches.</p>
  <h5>The Peril</h5>
  <p>While psychological targeting can increase sales by helping a firm communicate with customers in a way that resonates, there is also the risk of backlash if they feel they’re being manipulated or if data is being harvested without their consent.</p>
  <h5>The Right Way</h5>
  <p>Leading marketers will put ethics front and center, using psychological targeting only when more prosaic approaches are insufficient, ensuring that they’re offering greater value to the customers they target, and being transparent about what they’re doing and why.</p>
 </div>
</article-ideainbrief><p class="mag-icon-marketing-w30">Psychological targeting, the practice of influencing behavior through interventions customized to personality traits, burst onto the world stage in 2018, when Cambridge Analytica’s involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election made international headlines. The company had allegedly created psychological profiles of millions of Facebook users without their knowledge and then hit them with fearmongering political ads tailored to their psychological vulnerabilities.</p>

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<p>Controversy has swirled around psychological targeting&#8212;the practice of influencing people&#8217;s behavior by mining their digital footprints, identifying their personality traits, and then tailoring messages to them. Because it was misused to try to sway votes during recent elections, some have made it out to be a brainwashing tool. That&#8217;s simply a myth, explains Sandra Matz, a leading expert on it (who actually helped break the election story). Psychological targeting can&#8217;t radically change minds, she says. However, marketers can use it to shift opinions and attitudes, create demand where there was none, and engage with customers on a much more personal level. In this article she describes how companies can employ it in a way that creates the maximum value for them and their customers&#8212;and adheres to fundamental ethical principles.</p>

What Psychological Targeting Can Do

Controversy has swirled around psychological targeting—the practice of influencing people’s behavior by mining their digital footprints, identifying their personality traits, and then tailoring messages to them. Because it was misused to try to sway votes during recent elections, some have made it out to be a brainwashing tool. That’s simply a myth, explains Sandra Matz, a leading expert on it (who actually helped break the election story). Psychological targeting can’t radically change minds, she says. However, marketers can use it to shift opinions and attitudes, create demand where there was none, and engage with customers on a much more personal level. In this article she describes how companies can employ it in a way that creates the maximum value for them and their customers—and adheres to fundamental ethical principles.

What Psychological Targeting Can Do

Summary.

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