Mindmasters: The Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior
Sandra Matz
Harvard Business Review Press (January 2025)
“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re probably right.” Henry Ford
How does Sandra Matz organize the information, insights, and counsel provided her brilliant book? She explains: “Part 1 takes you on a journey through how computers learn to translate your digital footprints into intimate predictions of who you are: your personality, sexual orientation, political ideology, mental health, moral values, and more…
“Part 2 directly builds on the insights from part 1 to discuss the glaring ‘So what?’ question. Why should we care about the proliferation of technologies like psychological targeting? What does it mean for us — and society at large — that algorithms can decode the inner mental lives of millions of people and alter the way they think, feel, and behave? Should we be scared or elated?
“I will argue that we should be both.”
As for Part 3, Martz responds specifically and aggressively to this question: “With regard to collaborating with AI technology — including generative AI — how can we redesign the data game now being played to create a better future for all of us?”
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Based on data-driven science, the material in the three Parts reveals the following:
o How algorithms get to know us better than our closet friends do
o What you like [e.g. biases, preferences, choices] reveals who you really are
o Why everything we do is data
o How context shapes who we are
In Part Two, Matz offers the following:
o An inside look at psychological targeting — from Cambridge Analytica to beauty products (and back)
o Improving our finances, mental health, and maybe even our political climate
o Why we stand to lose more than just our privacy
In Part Three, Matz explains the following:
o Why being in charge of our own data isn’t always a blessing
o How to make it harder for third parties to exploit our data (and easier for them to serve us)
o What wine co-opts can teach us about new forms of collective data management
These are among the passages of greatest interest and value to me, also listed to indicate the nature and scope of Matz’s coverage:
o Introduction: The Digital Village (Pages 1-11)
o A Villager’s Guide to Machine Learning (18-20)
o The Big Five Personality Traits (20-26)
o The ABCs of Algorithmic Snooping (30-32)
o Figure 2-2: The words in people’s Facebook status updates most strongly correlated with being extroverted and introverted (41)
o I Can See It in Your Face (50-53)
o Beyond Social Media (56-58)
o Our Clozdet Confidant (62-65)
o Smartphones: Your 24/7 Life Companion (70-77)
o How the Places We Visit Shape Who We Are (83-88)
o Putting Psychological Targeting to the Test (95-96)
o Beyond Consumer Products and Personality Traits… (103-106)
o The Savings Struggle (113-119)
o Your Personal Mental Health Companion (119-129)
o Privacy Isn’t Dead…Yet (139-144)
o A Dead End (159-160)
o The Perfect Storm (164)
o Opening the Right Channel (166-174)
o Epilogue: The Moral Imperative to Shape Our Future (193-195)
o Figure B-1: Fbool status updates related to openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism (203)
The value of the material that Matz provides in any one of the three Parts of Mindmastersis worth several times more than the cost of several copies of the hardbound edition. That’s not a bargain; that’s a steal.
In the Epilogue, “The Moral Imperative to Shape Our Future” in today’s digital world, Sandra Maz observes, “‘we have a unique opportunity to reclaim control over our lives and create a collective data infrastructure that benefits all of us.”
I hope we all seize that opportunity.
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Here are two suggestions while you are reading Mindmasters: First, highlight key passages. Also, perhaps in a notebook kept near-at-hand (e.g. Apica Premium C.D. Notebook A5), record your comments, questions, and action steps (preferably with deadlines). Pay special attention to Matz’s comments that conclude each chapter.
These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will expedite frequent reviews of key material later.