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The New Mind Control
Article

The New Mind Control

Aeon, 2016

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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative

Recommendation

To what degree are search engines, such as Google, able to influence Internet users’ perceptions? Senior research psychologist Robert Epstein details a series of experiments his team conducted to study the effects of biased search results on people’s opinions and political voting choices. Epstein’s well-explained findings, in turn, reveal the frightening implications of unregulated technology’s capacity to manipulate opinions on a global scale. getAbstract recommends this article to everyone interested in technology and social science trends.

Take-Aways

  • No one knows exactly how Google chooses to rank its search results, but it’s undeniable that most people choose to view the highest-ranked websites displayed for any given search query.
  • In a 2013 experiment, researchers tested a fake search engine – “Kadoodle” – on 102 people from San Diego, California. Participants viewed search results that portrayed certain political candidates in positive ways.
  • In 2014, it performed the same experiment with 2,150 registered voters in India.

About the Author

Robert Epstein is a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology. He has authored 15 books and is the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today.


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