Simon Erskine Locke, Founder & CEO of CommunicationsMatch™

It’s fascinating to watch the developers of Facebook, Instagram, Google, and Twitter discuss the dark side of the technology they created in Netflix’s The Social Dilemma. “These services are killing people and causing people to kill themselves,” says Tim Kendall, former executive of Facebook, former president of Pinterest, and current CEO of Moment.

As the CEO of a technology company and a communicator, I was not surprised to hear the current “masters of the universe” argue that, when they were developing the notifications, pings, and swipes to keep people as long as possible on their platforms, the downsides of the this technology “crack” were not fully-understood.  

“We’re not bad people, there were just bad outcomes” is a reasonable summary of the argument.  

Should we give those who developed the technologies that have changed the world in good and bad ways a free pass? 

Applying or abdicating blame isn’t particularly productive. What we really need to do is better understand why it is that, as human beings, we seem to fall down behavioral rabbit holes on a journey to Wonderland.   

This matters if we want to keep ourselves or others out of them. The lessons are as equally relevant to political discourse as they are to technology. If we know the why, perhaps we can help resist the Homeric sirens that lead us to dash ourselves on social and political rocks.

This assumes that behavior is a conscious choice.  

I remember reading many years ago the idea that, “The greatest exercise of power is when people don’t know power is being exercised.” This was in the context of political or religious ideologies that we take on that powerfully frame our lives and interactions, and even perceptions of the truth, in ways we barely recognize.    

Even more obscure to us, our unconscious shapes 95% or more of what we do. In the hierarchy of power, the behavioral and evolutionary drivers of our actions reign supreme. Robert Wright’s book on evolutionary psychology, The Moral Animal, is a great read on this.

When technologists or political leaders succeed in tapping into the primal wellsprings of behavior hard coded in our genes or our lizard brains we should not be surprised when platforms or messages take off.     

But, it is overly simple to think that evil geniuses, whether technologists, politicians or communicators, are able to hack into our behavioral drivers at will to achieve their goals. 

The most powerful exercise of power may well be when it is exercised in ways that tap into our unconscious, but decision-making is always multi-dimensional, in which the conscious has a role to play. Our ability to learn from experience, recognize and decode behavioral traps, and prioritize what’s most important at any given time, counter-balance the notion that we are powerless when others seek to lead us to the dark side.

That said, it is important to recognize that when technology or political communications are aligned around our will or belief systems, as well as our psychological drivers, their power to drive change or persuade can be extraordinary. The alignment of the conscious and unconscious can lead to the unquestioning adoption of technologies or alternate political realities that are both hard to resist and resistant to efforts to change.            

While most of us are unconscious of much of what drives our actions, perhaps a saving grace is that evolution ultimately wires us for survival rather than destruction. 

For the most part, behaviors that lead us down the wrong paths are ultimately self-correcting. Individuals or companies that manage to hack into unconscious instincts or primal fears hit barriers when self-preservation is at stake at an individual or social level. 

Although this is reason for hope, world wars, the failure to address inequality, climate change, the loss of biodiversity, and rising suicide rates, underscore the potentially catastrophic cost of getting things wrong until we get them right.

In summary:

1. When technology platforms or political leaders tap into drivers of human behavior they can exercise enormous power – because we may not recognize that power is being exercised.
2. The ability to push “behavioral buttons” to achieve specific goals is limited because decision-making is complex and multi-dimensional, but when our conscious and unconscious are aligned the power technology or ideas can have over us can be extraordinary and extraordinarily resistant to change.  
3. A deeper understanding of what drives both conscious and unconscious behaviors is key to decoding them, to the power to resist falling down rabbit holes, to efforts to persuade, and the humility to recognize the limitations of our ability to do both.

CommunicationsMatch’s communications & PR agency search and hiring tools help companies find, shortlist, and engage communications, digital marketing and branding agencies, consultants and freelancers by industry and communications expertise, location and size. Through trusted partnerships with industry-leading providers it offers a range of services in areas including research surveys, search consulting, coaching and development, search consulting and agency promotion. Locke held senior corporate communications roles at Prudential Financial, Morgan Stanley, and Deutsche Bank and founded communications consultancies.