IBSS: Societal, Economic, Technological, and Legal Implications of Personalized Face Composites

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

This interdisciplinary research project will focus on the use of personal information for targeted and hidden persuasion as well as the technical, economic, and social implications of such covert marketing strategies. The researchers use the term "visceral targeting" to refer to techniques through which data about individuals is collected and then employed to covertly influence preferences, attitudes, and choices, without the individuals having knowledge of having given explicit consent for these practices. Realms within which visceral targeting may be practiced include purchasing decisions of consumers, voting intentions of citizens, and disclosure behaviors of social network users. This project will concentrate on the use of face composites in a personalized and targeted manner. Personalized face composites can be created by collecting images of an individual's face (or images of friends or family members) from a variety of sources (such as social networking sites) and then digitally combining those images with facial images of third parties. The result is a composite facial image which individuals may no longer recognize, but which may still evoke strong affective and emotional reactions. These techniques may be used for implicit persuasion and targeted marketing, to influence individuals in ways that are both highly individualized and unlikely to be detected. For example, a consumer might be shown an ad containing a personalized face composite, created using photos the consumer has made publicly available online, with the aim of influencing that consumer's preferences toward a product. These marketing techniques have recently been made possible by advancements in computer science, statistics, and data mining and by the increasing amount of individual information now available across online social networks and other online resources. The researchers will use a series of behavioral experiments to investigate the technological feasibility of such visceral marketing techniques, and they will conduct as set of complementary studies to examine related surrounding societal, economic, and legal implications of this practice. Visceral targeting techniques like personalized face composites may appeal to some groups, such as marketing companies, and be alarming to others, such as privacy advocates or members of the general public. This project will assess the actual feasibility of these techniques and their potential effect on people's attitudes and behaviors in various domains, including consumer behavior, personal opinions, and disclosure behavior. The project will examine the underlying psychological mechanisms that might explain the effects of such visceral targeting techniques as well as the computational applicability of such techniques. This project will provide new perspectives, information, and insights visceral targeting for a broad range of scholars and practitioners, including, sales executives, regulators, policy makers, and society at large. This project is supported through the NSF Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (IBSS) competition.