First published 2 Nov 2020 in LinkedIn
Credit: Paddle-fishing.com
Much have been said about IOT, big data and predictive analytics but there is a softer but equally powerful psychological movement that project management professionals need to get a handle on.
The ease of accessing mountain-loads of data and the all-day consumption of information is no longer a new phenomenon. However, the understanding of how those new channels like preferential news notifications, manipulated social media links and “intelligent” search engines, affects our thinking is just gaining mass recognition and are hallmarks of our 4th industrial revolution.
Without realising it, our brains and how we think have been changed. Psychological studies have shown that when people were asked to remember a list of facts, those told in advance that the facts will later be retrievable on the Internet are unable to remember them as well as a control group not informed that the facts could be found online. Similar studies showed that regular users of GPS devices began to lose some of their innate sense of direction.
Such is the ease to which our minds can be altered.
Such is the ease to which our minds can be “altered”.
Throw in politics and power into the equation, one can easily forecast the newfound capability to influence the populace, which can be subtly done in the span of years.
Nobelist Daniel Kahbeman and Richard Thaler circa 1979, pioneered works which gave rise to powerful capabilities to manipulate psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors to influence decision making dynamics of the masses.
When behavioural psychology is put to full use, “brainwashing” can be done on a global scale.
When behavioural psychology is put to full use, “brainwashing” can be done on a global scale. Some even think Facebook, Google & Twitter have been used to that end. The establishment calls this "nudges" that prey on cognitive biases. So much hatred can be sown, so much fear can be purpose-built into the minds of the populace to push massive changes, not possible before this hyper-connected information age.
Similar dynamics are also at play at the organisational level.
The time is actually ripe, for those who understand how to harness cognitive bias, to counter the avalanche of bullshit and build resilience of reasoning from ground up.
I suspect the best project and change managers will need to be well acquainted with this topic, even more so in the coming years as digital marketing blurs the lines and imposes on the minds of senior decision making staff, of what's important for the company, without knowing the organisation well. The term cognitive bias, itself is generic. It has a list of over a hundred cognitive categories, ranging from ambiguity effect, IKEA effect, omission bias and “women are wonderful” effect. One which many are familiar with, is stereotyping. Large IT sales organisations will attempt to use these methods to prey on the psychological fault lines that they find in our organisations.
The time is actually ripe, for those who understand how to harness cognitive bias, to counter the avalanche of bullshit and build resilience of reasoning from ground up.
A similar phenomena, at a national scale, would probably be more colourful. Take for example, the 2016 US presidential election. The mainstream media most likely would have favoured Hillary. Because critical mass has been reached in terms of invisible setting of agenda, any real poll worth their salt daring to point out anything contrary, like pointing out something good about the Trump camp, would have been in serious political trouble. The insecurity and fear of being not with the masses will further force those on the fence to “fall in place”, otherwise grave consequences could ensue. This makes the cognitive skew even worse.
Sometimes though, “influencers” work against the laws of reality and it does backfire. If the difference between the intent and reality is small, they may get away with it. However, if the common folk is in pain and begins to realise the game, then the game is up. Reality very often triumphs eventually, in what is called the day of reckoning. For the election, it's the election results!
According to The Pew Research Center in its article “The Future of Truth and Misinformation Online”. There is almost a 50-50 split of opinions as to whether fake news and the proliferation of doctored narratives spread by humans and bots, will improve in the next decade (survey conducted in 2017). Many experts predicted that the problem of misinformation will be amplified because the worst side of human nature is magnified by bad actors using advanced online tools at internet speed on a vast scale. Perhaps, one of the agenda for the great reset spruiked by the World Economic Forum, should include a framework that balances the total freedom of the Internet, with a healthy dose of responsibility.
So buckle up information professionals, load up cognitive bias 101, tonnes of deep science and political management skills. The technical folks will attempt to dive into data, for example Prof. Jennifer Golbeck of University of Maryland who used Benford’s law to root out foul play and discovered that Russian bots we behind some suspicious Twitter behavior. This was previously almost impossible to detect by humans.
The future is not done for yet. So let’s partake in its creation. Remember Buckminster Fuller’s word “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”