Alessandro Acquisti, The Impact of Relative Standards on Concern about Privacy

Comment by: Lauren Willis

PLSC 2009

Workshop draft abstract:

Consumers consistently rank privacy high among their concerns, yet their behaviors often reveal a remarkable lack of regard for the protection of personal information.  We propose that one explanation for the discrepancy is that actual concern about privacy in a particular situation depends on comparative judgments.  We present the results of two studies that illustrate the comparative nature of privacy-related behavior.  The first study focuses on the impact of receiving information about self-revelations made by others on an individual’s own self-revelatory behavior. The second study focuses on the impact of past intrusions on privacy on current self-revelatory behavior.  We find that admission to sensitive and even unethical behaviors by others elicits information disclosure, and that increasing the sensitivity of questions over the course of a survey inhibits information disclosure. Together, these studies can help explain why people profess great concern about privacy yet behave in a fashion that bespeaks a lack of concern.