Psychological Aspects of Allowing our Cybersurveillance and Data-Collection

-- By DonnaZamir - 06 Dec 2019

The Cybersurveillance Cognitive Dissonance

We are all being cyber-surveilled – this is a well-known fact to many people, especially to the students of this course.

An overwhelmingly large amount of data about us is continuously and constantly extracted from our laptops, cellphones and other digital devices, and is used by, and traded between, numerous entities (both public as well as private), even without our knowledge.

Although we are all aware, to some extent, of this phenomenon – we nonetheless continue to addictively and habitually use our devices, and permit this constant surveillance and information collection to occur.

This situation positions us in cognitive dissonance, which is common in many other contexts of addictions, such as addiction to abusive substances or cigarettes – people know it can be destructive to them, but they nonetheless continue to consume these products.

One fundamental question in this regard is: why do we do this? Don't we know better?

Throughout the course, it was suggested that some psychological aspects underly this "cybersurveillance cognitive dissonance", such as the need to reduce anxiety; FOMO; repression and denial of the ramifications of our data-surveillance; and difficulty to delay gratifications.

Drawing on these discussions, other psychological aspects will be offered to further elucidate this cognitive dissonance, and to try to explain the reasons for this "irrational" behavior.

Optimism Bias

One example of what is largely defined as "positive illusions", is the "optimism bias" (or unrealistic optimism), i.e. a judgment bias that tends to affect people's subjective estimates of the likelihood of future events in their lives, causes people to overestimate the likelihood of positive events in their lives, and to underestimate the likelihood of negative events, especially in comparison to other people.

Studies have found that approximately 80% of the population display optimism bias in some instances, and it was documented across various characteristics, including gender, age, nationality, and profession.

For example, empirical research shows that people believe they are less prone than others to health risks from their cellphones; smokers believe they have a lower risk of developing lung cancer than the average smoker; and students expect to receive higher starting salaries and more job offers than they eventually receive.

Similarly, this bias can help explain why people who are aware of themselves being constantly surveilled and their behavior being collected and traded, do not do anything about it – they just do not believe that any harm could come to them; to other people – maybe, but not to them. Thus, when we, here in the U.S., read news reports (if we read them at all) about viruses targeting Hong Kong protestors' iPhones; or about people who their WhatsApp accounts have been hacked in India – we might just tell ourselves that it is not going to happen to us, just because we are "us" (and not "them").

Present Bias

The "present bias" (or the "discounting the future" bias) is the tendency of people to give stronger weight to benefits that are closer to the present time, while considering trade-offs between two future moments. In other words, people tend to focus on the "here and now" and to over-estimate the value of immediate rewards, at the expense of long-term, equivalent or higher benefits.

This bias was raised in the context of environmental law and the notion of intergenerational justice. Thus, despite the fact that people expressly claim they care about the environment and want to leave the world in good condition for future generations – they nonetheless discount environmental risks, and their manifestation in the future, to a greater degree than can be rationally defended.

In a similar manner, even though people are aware of the future risks that cybersurveillance entails, they choose to discount these risks, and to reap the benefits of using their laptops and cellphones in the present.

Groupthink

Another relevant psychological effect is "groupthink", a phenomenon which occurs when a group of people – of various sizes – make irrational or non-optimal decisions; among other things, due to a desire to create harmony, coherence and conformity within the group. In this situation, group members tend to refrain from expressing doubts and judgments or disagreeing with the consensus, and may ignore prospective ethical or moral consequences.

Implementing this phenomenon in the context of the cybersurveillance cognitive dissonance, it can be suggested that when we are confronted with explicit information regarding our cybersurveillance – we dismiss or diminish our doubts and reservations on the matter, in order to conform and harmonize with the rest of our cyber-surveilled peers. We do so, even if cybersurveillance contradicts our most fundamental values, such as the right to autonomy and privacy.

Can We Reduce the Biases?

There is no doubt that the above-described psychological biases can be quite useful for our everyday lives – because, what could be better and more convenient than ignoring the numerous threats of the world; satisfying our current momentary desires; and conforming with the conduct of everyone around us? However, we all would agree that ignoring existing risks and potentially adverse future results of our behavior, can only last so long.

Thus, studies have offered several ways for reducing these biases. These mainly focus on raising awareness to, and emphasizing, the underlying risks and adverse outcomes of these biases; for instance, by providing people information about these risks in a salient and clear manner; highlighting the frequency and seriousness of these risks; and emphasizing that these risks are not confined to a specific group of individuals, but rather apply to everyone.

However, due to the fact that our formal education, as well as the majority of information we consume, are mostly produced and controlled by the exact same entities which cyber-surveil us and collect our data (both governmental and commercial entities) – it seems much harder to raise awareness of these problems, and accordingly, to reduce our biases.

Yet, we can still hope that awareness regarding the hazards of cybersurveillance will be raised through other communication channels, such as off-stream and interest-free media bodies, before it will be too late to do something about it (although, this aspiration might be optimistically biased).