Nine years ago, before Cambridge Analytica existed, I caught wind of a research project at Cambridge involving the online measurement of the ‘big five’ personality dimensions. These are usually listed by the acronym OCEAN or CANOE: Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness and Extraversion. I made a note to go to Cambridge to learn more but, being low on conscientiousness, I never got around to it.
Perhaps I dodged a bullet by not getting involved. When people say ‘It’s the early bird that catches the worm’, I always reply, ‘Yes, but what about the early worm?’
Besides, does personality alone predict behaviour? Perhaps not as much as Cambridge Analytica promised. True, had Donald Trump done less or worse digital advertising, he might have lost. But that’s not to prove psychographic data was decisive. Trump had a smaller budget, after all. But unlike Hillary, he was sufficiently interesting that people wanted to see him. He also savvily used his plane to return home to New York every day after campaigning, rather than spending exhausting consecutive nights on the road as she did. (In this, Trump was again inspired by British thinking — by Peter Grant and Led Zeppelin, who pioneered this approach when touring in the 1970s.)
Political advertising is always more dishonest than commercial advertising. The reason is simple: commercial marketing is a repeated play; political marketing is a one-shot game. Dishonest commercial advertising — for products bought repeatedly — might pay in the short term but costs you double in the long term as people cotton on to your deceit. In politics, only the short term counts. Digital targeting makes deception easier, as it’s easier to lie to people one at a time.
(This long-term/short-term distinction is even found in nature: some orchids produce petals advertising the presence of nectar to bees, even though they can’t deliver it — the Nick Cleggs of the botanical world.
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