The importance of digital psychometrics – that is the assessment of psychological characteristics via digital footprints – was highlighted recently in the context of Trump’s unexpected victory during the U.S. presidential election. According to international media reports, Trump’s campaign used detailed psychological profiles of 220 million US citizens to target them with more than 175,000 different versions of personalized ads that catered to their values and preferences. In line with the public debate around the effectiveness as well as broader implications of such predictive technologies, this talk focuses on the following three questions: (1) How does digital psychometrics work (2) What are the potential benefits and dangers of digital psychometrics? (3) And finally, what does the future of digital psychometrics hold and how will it affect technology?
