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[–]Vigte[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Maria Pocovi slides her laptop over to me with the webcam switched on. My face stares back at me, overlaid with a grid of white lines that map the contours of my expression. Next to it is a shaded window that tracks six “core emotions”: happiness, surprise, disgust, fear, anger, and sadness. Each time my expression shifts, a measurement bar next to each emotion fluctuates, as if my feelings were an audio signal.

All I could think of was this

But to ambitious data scientists like Pocovi, who has worked with major political parties in Latin America in recent elections, Cambridge Analytica, which shut down in May, was behind the curve.

Thus why we were allowed to learn about it.

Political insiders say campaigns are buying into this prospect in increasing numbers, even if they’re reluctant to acknowledge it. “It’s rare that a campaign would admit to using neuromarketing techniques—though it’s quite likely the well-funded campaigns are,”

No kidding...

Mexico City neurophysiologist Jaime Romano Micha, whose former firm, Neuropolitka, was one of the top providers of brain-based services to political campaigns.

New rabbit hole...

Of course, you can’t stick electrodes on every person watching TV and browsing Facebook. But you don’t need to.

Yay. "Science".

Pocovi’s approach at Emotion Research Lab requires only a video player and a front-facing webcam. When volunteers enroll in her political focus groups online, she sends them videos of an ad spot or a candidate that they can watch on their laptop or phone. As they digest the content, she tracks their eye movements and subtle shifts in their facial expressions.

Crowd sourcing... yep... (side board: all these people want to talk about "herd immunity" and shit when talking about vaccines, but society is going to be ruined by technological research conducted on a few thousand willing dupes of likely low IQ who get paid like $100 probably, objectively far more fucking dangerous than some old ass disease and reliant on the same arguement...)

Pocovi says her facial analysis software can detect and measure “six universal emotions, 101 secondary emotions, and eight moods,”

So my guess is somewhere there's a program that can analyze them all, because as before: why are we hearing about it?

Some critics of Ekman’s system, such as neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, have argued that facial expressions don’t necessarily correlate with emotional states. Still, a variety of studies have shown at least some correspondence. In a 2014 study at Ohio State University, cognitive scientists defined 21 “distinct emotions,” based on the consistent ways most of us move our facial muscles.

Not much to say there... included for completeness

Several onetime devotees of brain-scan analysis are also pursuing simpler and cheaper techniques these days. Before the 2008 financial crisis, Ohme says, international clients were more willing to fly five guys from Poland out to perform on-site brain studies. After the recession, though, that business mostly dried up.

That prompted Ohme to develop a different strategy, one untethered to time, space, or EEG electrodes. His updated approach stems from that used in unconscious-­bias studies by social psychologist Anthony Greenwald, who became a mentor when Ohme visited the US on a Fulbright scholarship. Ohme says his smartphone-based test—which he calls iCode—reveals covert political leanings that would never surface in traditional questionnaires or focus groups.

AHHH Fulbright. Now we're getting somewhere.

What’s interesting, Ohme says, isn’t how people respond to the questions per se, but how much they dither first. “When we measure the hesitation level, we can see that some answers are positive but with hesitation, and some are positive and instantaneous,” he says. “We measure how much you deviated [from baseline]. This deviation is key.”

It's not about measuring what makes you the same/normal (facial motion, as per the beginning of the article) - but measuring what makes you DEVIATE from that norm.

Ohme declines to discuss his current political clients in much detail, citing confidentiality agreements. But he volunteers that in an iCode survey of nearly 900 people, he predicted Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat before the election.

Ohme claims to have helped other candidates in similar straits. One of his tests revealed that while a certain European client had a good-sized base of supporters, many weren’t motivated to get out and vote because they assumed their candidate would win. Armed with this knowledge, the campaign made a renewed push to get its loyal base to the polls. The client ended up winning in a squeaker.

I wonder who that was... (no seriously, I'm not up on Euro-elections).

“We are susceptible in multiple ways, and not aware of our susceptibility,” Schreiber says. “The fact that attitudes can be manipulated in ways we’re not aware of has a lot of implications for political discourse.” If campaigns are nudging voters toward their candidate without voters’ knowledge, political discussions that were once exchanges of reasoned views will become knee-jerk skirmishes veering ever further from the democratic ideal. “I don’t think it’s time to run in panic,” Schreiber says, “but I don’t think we can be sanguine about it.”

Nice...

Ohme insists that voters can inoculate themselves against neuroconsultants’ tactics if they’re savvy enough. “I measure hesitation. I can change your mind only if you hesitate. If you are a firm believer, I cannot change anything,” he says. “If you’re scared to be manipulated, learn. The more you learn, the more firm and stable your attitudes are, and the more difficult it is for someone to convince you otherwise.”

Interesting advice - and interesting how he likens it to "innoculating" yourself, makes me feel better about my rant above.

The video was of a laughing baby, and I felt the corners of my mouth quirking up. After, the computer asked me how I’d felt while watching. “Happy,” I clicked. I’m a mom, right? I love babies. Yet when my emotion analysis arrived, it showed almost no trace of happiness on my face.

Thinking about the results, I realized the emotion software was right. I hadn’t really been happy at all. I had taken the test late at night, and I had been exhausted. The computer had seen me in a way I wasn’t used to seeing myself. I thought of something Dan Hill, the former advisor to the Mexican president’s campaign, had told me. “The biggest lies in life,” he’d said, “are the ones we tell ourselves.”

Oof.

Hope you enjoyed.