Shankar Vedantam
Appearances
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. I have a question for you. How well do you know yourself? Chances are, you'll tell me you know yourself very well. All of us like to believe this. We feel like we know ourselves better than anyone else does. Every day we make choices based on this knowledge we have of ourselves.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
If you ask them what movies they want to watch, they will tell you about the movies they aspirationally want to watch. But if instead you look at the books that people actually read or the movies they actually watch, it usually paints a different picture of their preferences.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
I want to talk about some of the ways you and others have found that our digital footprints can reveal deep truths about our lives. In 2019, you ran a study that predicted people's income based on an extremely unlikely source. Tell me what you found Sandra.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
I'm puzzled by how that would be the case. I mean, what does my posting about a movie that I've watched or a vacation that I've taken, how do you tell what my income is based on those postings, Sandra?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
What's fascinating about that, of course, is that most of us are not thinking, are my posts describing something that's happening in the present or something that is about the future, for example, but that difference, in fact, can reveal something about us.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
You used an interesting phrase just now, behavioral residue. What do you mean by that, Sandra?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
This week on Hidden Brain, how understanding what we do instead of listening to what we say can help us make better financial choices, improve our physical and mental health, and maybe even bridge our political divides. Philosophers tell us the highest wisdom is to know ourselves. They say this precisely because knowing ourselves is difficult, not easy.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Let's look at some of the ways in which these behavioral residues can tell us important things about our lives and the lives of other people. The researcher Yo-Yo Wu once looked at what you could learn about a person from their Facebook likes.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So the study found that after observing just 10 likes from someone's Facebook profile, the model was able to judge a user's personality better than their work colleagues. After 65 likes, it knew users better than someone's friends. And after 120 likes, better than family members. I mean, that's astonishing, Sandra.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
I'm also assuming that when you have intersecting lines of evidence, so this study was looking at Facebook likes, but if you were able to combine that, for example, with people's credit card purchases, if you were able to combine that with their Twitter feeds, if you were able to combine that with what they're saying about themselves, you're gradually producing a more and more accurate profile of who the person is.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
I'm wondering if you can talk a moment about how these sort of in some ways mindless algorithms are painting a picture of us that's more accurate than our friends and neighbors and coworkers. And some of that is because our friends and neighbors and coworkers are bringing their own perceptions and their own biases to the equation as they're evaluating us.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Yeah. I mean, in some ways, this is like Sherlock Holmes on steroids is what these machines are doing, right? Because they're actually picking up huge amounts of data, far more than most of us are actually able to observe in the physical world.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So even our search history, what we're looking for online, can say a lot about us. Talk about this, that in some ways what we search for online can paint a very powerful picture of who we are.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
It requires self-reflection, self-awareness, and a healthy dose of humility. At Columbia University, psychologist Sandra Matz studies how one aspect of our behavior can reveal surprising truths about who we are. Sandra Matz, welcome to Hidden Brains.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So we had Seth Stevens-Davidowitz on Hidden Brain some years ago, and one of the things he mentioned was that there was this negative correlation between racist searches on the internet and the likelihood that people would vote for Barack Obama.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So in both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, places with higher rates of Google searches using racist terms were less likely to vote for Barack Obama.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
In another study, Sandra, you looked at the relationship between social media updates and voting, but you were not looking at explicit data, like people saying they were going to vote for a particular politician. What were you looking for and what did you find?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
And again, what's interesting here is that it's like the mismatched socks in the drawer, right? It's not a signal that people are actually thinking will say something about their political preferences. If I'm feeling upset or sad or my affect in general is negative, I don't think it's going to reveal something about my political preferences, but in fact it does.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
You know, I'm reminded of that analysis that found in the 2016 presidential election that Donald Trump won three quarters of all counties that had a Cracker Barrel restaurant, but only 22% of counties that had a Whole Foods store.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Now, most people are not thinking about politics when they're shopping for groceries or dining out, but it turns out that our shopping and dining habits can reveal powerful things about us.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Sandra, you grew up in a small village in Germany which had two restaurants and no shops. Can you paint me a picture of the place where you grew up?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Most of us spend a great deal of time every day in front of various devices. We scroll and tap and like and listen. We search for answers to our most personal questions and post updates to our social media feeds. When we come back, how all this data can help us improve our lives. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
You wake up in the morning and reach for your phone. You open Instagram and leave a comment on a friend's vacation pictures. You sneeze and run a Google search about allergies. On the way to work you buy a muffin at a local cafe using your credit card. Every day we leave dozens of tiny traces of ourselves in the digital world.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
At Columbia University, Sandra Matz calls the accumulation of these traces our digital footprints. She is the author of Mindmasters, the data-driven science of predicting and changing human behavior. Sandra, you say that the traces we leave online not only paint a picture of who we are, they show marketers and political campaigns how to influence us.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Now, we've all heard a lot about the problems of digital surveillance, but fewer people know how these tools can be used for good. Let's start with the work you've done showing how psychological targeting can help people save more money.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So just to underscore the principle here, what you're doing is you're basically saying we can tell what people's personalities are by the digital footprints they're leaving behind. And if we can tailor messages in some ways to match people's personalities, those messages are far more likely to break through.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So one day I understand that your doorbell rang and it was a neighbor reporting a missing rabbit?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Our digital footprints can also reveal insights about our mental health. You and a colleague have studied whether there's a connection between depression and a person's location data.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
And I suppose, you know, there's always going to be noise in the data. So someone may have lost their phone inside their sofa cushions. And so the phone basically sits at home for three weeks. It doesn't mean that they are depressed and they haven't left their home in three weeks. It just means that the phone was lost.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
But I think what you're really saying, Sandra, is that in aggregate, this data, in fact, are telling us valuable things. And at a minimum, they're basically raising a flag that warrants further investigation.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
I mean, this is really no different than basically saying, let me measure your resting heart rate or your cholesterol levels. And over time, if I have enough data, it might paint me a picture of saying, you know, you're heading down a bad path. You might want to change your lifestyle.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So our digital footprints not only reveal things about our past, they can also predict things we might do in the future. You once tried to predict dropout rates among college students by studying their digital footprints. How did you do this, Sandra?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
And, of course, when you put it this way, it seems to make sense now.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
If I know, for example, that a student doesn't have many friends and is not exchanging messages and, in fact, is a little bit isolated and is not spending time hanging out with other students, it's not unreasonable now to say maybe the student doesn't feel like he or she belongs at university and is at higher risk of dropping out.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
In other words, instead of a one size fits all approach, now you can actually say the individual person gets his or her own approach.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
We decide how to spend our money, who to vote for, where to go for dinner, based on what we know of our predilections and preferences. But our knowledge of ourselves is not always accurate. A host of biases and self-deceptions keep us from seeing ourselves clearly.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Sandra, you say that these digital tracking tools are increasingly being used not just to identify health issues, but to actually intervene. How so?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
You tell the story of a woman named Chukora Ali who was in a car accident that left her severely injured. She spiraled into depression. Tell me her story and what happened to her.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
What was the effect of using this bot on her mental health, Sandra?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
And again, I don't think you're necessarily suggesting that, you know, a bot is necessarily an ideal replacement for a human therapist. But you're saying in a situation like this, where in fact, you know, the person cannot afford or cannot get to a human therapist, this would be a potential solution.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Many people are worried that digital tracking has increased polarization. The moment you click on one video with a political theme, the algorithms quickly paint a picture of you as liberal or conservative and start feeding you more and more of the same content. In other words, digital tracking and psychological targeting can quickly leave you inside an echo chamber.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
You say it's at least theoretically possible to use these same tools to reduce polarization?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
In other words, if I know that you are basically self-selecting into one echo chamber, you're saying, what if these platforms in some ways can encourage us to basically visit other echo chambers and in some ways broaden our worldviews?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
When I'm thinking about the concerns that major platforms might have in serving up this kind of information, I'm struck by the fact that in some ways I think, Sandra, what you're talking about is the difference between the information we want and the information that we need. So the information that I want might be information that basically confirms that my pre-existing views are correct.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
The information that I need might in fact tell me, hey, take a look at what's happening on the other side.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
How was the rabbit eventually recaptured? Was it a dramatic moment?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
In our companion episode on Hidden Brain Plus, we look at the downsides of digital surveillance. We take a closer look at the harms of tracking technologies and why the most popular intervention to protect people, giving them control over whether they attract online and whether their children attract online, may not be the best approach.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
To listen, please look for the episode titled How to Protect Yourself Online on Hidden Brain Plus. If you're not yet signed up, please visit support.hiddenbrain.org. If you're using an Apple device, please go to apple.co slash hiddenbrain. Sandra Matz is the author of Mindmasters, the data-driven science of predicting and changing human behavior.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Sandra, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. We end today with a story from our sister show, My Unsung Hero.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
This My Unsung Hero segment is brought to you by T-Mobile for Business. Today's story comes from Stephanie Cole. When Stephanie was a teenager, she got her very first job. It was around the winter holidays at a department store in Los Angeles.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
I'm getting a sense that this was a village where everyone knew everyone's business. Very much so. Very much so. So when you were 15, Sandra, you loved riding around the village with your boyfriend on a motorcycle. What was this bike like and where would you go?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Stephanie Cole is from Bainbridge Island, Washington. This segment of My Unsung Hero was brought to you by T-Mobile for Business. You can find more stories like this on the My Unsung Hero podcast or on our website, hiddenbrain.org. I'm Shankar Vedantham. See you soon.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Sandra and her boyfriend weren't hurt, but Sandra had to spend a year's worth of tutoring money to get the bike repaired.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
When you ask people how smart they are, or how ethical they are, or how good-looking they are, for example, majorities say they are above average, which, of course, is mathematically impossible. But it isn't just about vanity.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
When you say you were punished, how so? What was the reaction of your neighbors and friends?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Yeah. Was there anything good that came from all this surveillance, Sandra?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Was there a time when you in fact got very useful advice from these people because in fact they knew you quite well?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
And in some ways, it sounds like they knew you almost better than you knew yourself.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
How many times have you gone to a restaurant you've been to before and ordered the same dish you ordered last time, only to remember after you started eating it that you didn't like it the last time? Or think about your last romantic entanglement that ended in disaster. By the time it ended, did you wonder how your past self could have gotten involved with someone so unsuitable?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Sandra's experience with the nosy neighbors in her village is what life has been like for most humans through most of human history. We've typically lived in small groups, and people in those groups have known everything there is to know about us. Today, many of us live in a different kind of village.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
It's a global village where anonymous entities, rather than our actual neighbors, have eyes on us. Not all of them have our best interests at heart. When we come back, what our digital footprints reveal about us and how this information can be used both to help us and to harm us. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Every day, as we go about our lives, we reveal aspects of ourselves to the world. If you visit a local bakery a lot, it's probably because you like pastries and baked goods. If you spend time in parks, it's because you value nature and recreation. Someone who rarely ventures outside their home except to go to work might be introverted.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
At Columbia University, computational social scientist Sandra Matz studies how the things we say and do reveal things about our thoughts, preferences, and personalities. Sandra, I want to talk about the clues we unintentionally leave behind us as we go about our lives. Let's start in the physical world.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Many years ago, you were on a date and things were going well and you ended up at your date's apartment. Tell me what you did as soon as you got to his place.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So you weren't wearing a hat and carrying around a magnifying glass, but it feels vaguely Sherlock Holmes-ian to me what you were doing in that apartment.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
I'm wondering whether your impressions of your husband, your first impressions of him when you were dating, did they turn out to be accurate, Sandra?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So the psychologist Sam Gosling has shown that people, in fact, are remarkably accurate at judging the personality of strangers when given the chance to snoop around their offices or bedrooms. Tell me about this work, Sandra.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
Over the last few decades, researchers in a variety of disciplines have discovered there is a much better way to understand people than to ask them questions. When you ask people what books they like to read, people will tell you about the novels and biographies they think they ought to like.
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
So you say there are parallels between what happened in your village or your behavior when you visited your date's place and what happens to us online. It's as if your village neighbors now have access to your Facebook messages and credit card purchases?
Hidden Brain
What Your Online Self Reveals About You
You say it takes shockingly little information to get an extremely granular picture about people, even in a big town like New York City. Now, there are millions of transactions that take place every day in New York. Finding any one person might seem like you're looking for a needle in a haystack.