Persuasive Technology

The idea of building a business model around influencing human behavior is not new. For decades, enterprises like casinos and cigarette manufacturers have thrived on the concept of habit formation. Similarly, technology has changed the way people behave to introduce a whole new way of communicating and interacting with our environment, and exploits those behaviors to generate continuous streams of new devices and services.

Now technology developers are taking things one step further to design products that are specifically aimed at shaping people’s habits. Combining psychological and behavioral insights into how and why individuals make specific choices with knowledge of how the brain works, companies are actually training users to act in a certain way.

For example, one mobile game designer collects data from its users – such as the time of day that they tend to play, which games they prefer and how they react to losing – and uses that information to induce players to play longer. By watching for changes in the time between finger presses and the intensity of play, they can predict when someone is losing interest with a high degree of accuracy, and suggest other games to keep players online.

Other platforms that employ persuasive technology are aimed at improving employee participation in corporate wellness programs, enhancing product marketing with advertising that’s targeted to individual consumers, and even influencing voters on political issues.

Regulations currently require companies to obtain user permission before tracking their behaviors, but these new technologies will likely generate some new discussion about transparency and disclosure when it comes to persuading consumers to form new habits.