Universities have an obligation to share findings. Should companies also have this obligation?

Research into (online) behavior is becoming increasingly normal. Commercial companies in particular are researching on a large scale how and why people make certain choices and how you can influence these choices. By researching decision-making processes online and on websites, companies are learning more and more about how behavior comes about. In addition to direct profit, this also provides long-term insights for sustainable and innovative development.

Behavioral knowledge is gold for companies, but are companies allowed to keep these insights to themselves?

Recently I was allowed to share at a high school in Alkmaar how Online Dialogue researches behavior online. By showing how I am able to map behavioral models with multiple test variants per hypothesis and multiple hypotheses per test variant, it did get quiet for a moment. “So it doesn't matter if I've never been on a website before? Companies learn so much about how our subconscious works that they are still able to predict and influence my behavior?” Yes, indeed. The uncomfortable truth. “But why are companies only using this knowledge to get us to buy more? Can't they also help us make healthier choices, such as not smoking?”

Two days later, I gave a similar presentation at the European Congress of Psychology. This time I got to tell a room full of scientists about online behavioral research and the speed at which we can validate behavioral insights. The scientists were interested, but were left with the same questions as the scholars: what does increased behavioral knowledge mean for us, the subjects of the online experiments (society as a whole)?

Sharing behavioral insights with society

Facebook has shown us in the past that sharing behavioral insights is not always received positively. A quick search using the terms “facebook” and “experiment” already immediately yields titles like “Facebook sorry - almost - for secret psychological experiment on users.” In 2014, there was much commotion when it was announced that a scientific psychological experiment had been conducted among a number of Facebook users.

The study examined the extent to which emotions are unconsciously transferable by reducing both positively and negatively charged messages in the ‘participants’ newsfeed. The positive messages in one half of the experiment and the negative messages in the other half of the experiment. The effect of this modification was then mapped: how does the reduction of certain emotions affect behavior? The study showed that a reduction in the number of positive messages in the news feed also caused users themselves to post fewer positive messages and more negative messages. And vice versa for reducing the number of negative posts.

A social psychology experiment, conducted by leading scientists at a commercial company with very many online users, that was received very negatively. Reactions were extreme and not diverse: Facebook and the scientists had gone a step too far. “You can't just influence people's emotions, can you?” The scientific journal that published the article published even came up with a correction To calm tempers a bit.

From a psychological perspective, there is something interesting going on: aren't we (unconsciously) influencing each other's emotions all the time and everywhere? Facebook's very experiment shows how strong an effect a single message has on people's emotional well-being. Therefore, shouldn't we ask the question differently: “Surely you can't just influence people's emotions without measuring what the effect is?” Only by measuring ánd sharing the effect of sent messages can we as a society become more aware of the power of messages and thereby decide what we think is good and what is not.

Sharing with science means sharing with society

The Facebook experiment touched people and showed me as a psychologist that it is crucial to raise awareness of behavioral knowledge. As humans, we are susceptible to influence, and awareness is a first step to arming ourselves.

Online Dialogue has begun linking clients with universities to share data and explore scientific hypotheses. For example, Zoover and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam are exploring whether they can work together to further the scientific research on the differences between vacation experiences.

Universities have an obligation to share findings. Should companies have this obligation as well? As one room full of scientists articulated “insights that companies gain from online experiments go far beyond the website.”.

Should marketers and data analysts share more data from the experiments they do through a/b testing, for example? Are you working with data with social relevance? And how might we as marketers and data analysts, and the companies we work for, contribute to society through data? And how far should our transparency go in that?

I'm curious to hear your opinions, so be sure to leave them in the comments.

This article was published on July 31 at Marketingfacts.co.uk