psychometrics and congruence

Have you ever heard of psychometrics? If you’re not a psych student or a marketer/political campaign manager, then you probably don’t have much info on the subject. As always, I’m here to explain and give you a glimpse into another facet of psychology. Psychometrics is defined as the science of measuring mental capacities and processes. The practical application is profiling thoughts and potential behaviors. More often than not using the big 5 (OCEAN) categorization we can accurately profile someone and predict their behavior.

What does the research show us? Lennart J. Krotzek in his research article “inside the voters mind” goes through some of the mechanics behind psychometrics, although his emphasis is on voters’ minds, he references the uses in marketing. His focus was on ad congruence between a voters personality (profiling) and the candidates message (marketing). The main point being that ad congruence induces a positive feeling toward a candidate but doesn’t necessarily make someone more likely to vote for them.

How does it all work? As cited by the research, and maybe you saw it at the time as well, in 2016 Cambridge Analytica used likes and shares and other social media data to profile people by the big 5 personality types and then target the specific personality types with tailored messages. (example). Although controversial the analytic company attributes this targeting to getting Donald trump elected president. the part to focus on is that in multiple industries, its generally supported that targeted ads are more persuasive and thus preferred. Assessment of a user’s profile and online behaviors allows “us” to build a personality profile. Following that, this is where the ad congruence is important. If you’re a marketer or a campaign manager crafting a message to a personality type increase reception of the ad. Furthermore, personality traits can predict ideology, and then behavior. When a message is more congruent, it is easier to process by the receiver and that’s the main reason its more impactful. “They just get me.”

Continuing with ad congruence, the research suggests that social media users have a limited capacity to process information, therefore more congruent messages are better received leaving capacity to process less salient information. From this, there is high cognitive involvement in a more immediate effect, whereas low involvement only appears after repeated exposure. What’s that mean? Congruent ads work better because they resonate faster allowing more thought after something is already accepted due to congruence. Low congruence of a message will still work but only after repeated exposure. Think of it this way, if coca cola hits you with an ad on your birthday, telling you happy birthday and that you can have 50% off, because its your birthday and the message is congruent with that, you’ll have more capacity to think about buying coca cola. However, if coca cola says they’re good for birthdays the very general message will take more exposure to work because its more general and less congruent to you. to quote the research directly “a fluent message elicits a spontaneous affective response before the evaluation takes place and increases the positive evaluation of the message.”

It also increases trust in the source of the message. And now you see why psychometrics is so important to politics. Its not to advertise a candidate for exposure, its to increase trust, more people knowing about a candidate is how political campaigns used to work, however in the age of the internet the trust of a candidate is far more valuable. The candidates or companies message when congruent with a personality type improve reception but don’t always result in a sale or a vote. The study concludes that further research is necessary to understand the processes behind the effects of congruent messaging.

Have you been targeted? If you have any social media profiles, then the answer is yes. The real question you should ask yourself is have any of the ads you have seen really made you think “damn that hits home” or if you’re like me the question is more like “shit, they’re listening.” I have ads for merchandise from my Alma mater and that makes sense I search for it on google and amazon and I follow my schools social media profiles, but when I like a post about tacos and then get a taco Tuesday ad with a message that resonates (example: neuroticism get our taco deal before you miss it, openness to experience: have tired our new tacos) that’s psychometric targeting at work.

Jake O. founder and editor of Psycho-social.com, graduate of Oregon state university (Go Beavs!) BA in psychology. Connect with him by email to pick his brain about social issues and psychological understandings of them.

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Source

Krotzek, L. J. (2019). Inside the Voter's Mind: The Effect of Psychometric Microtargeting on Feelings Toward and Propensity to Vote for a Candidate. International journal of communication [Online], 3609+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A610256042/AONE?u=anon~d1f56c55&sid=googleScholar&xid=7338c06b