Who’s hijacked our minds on LinkedIn?

A critical thinking approach to identifying how we fall prey to the psychologically exploitative strategies being used by some content creators on LinkedIn and other social media

Into the deep 🐙 by Joanna Nowak

What is critical thinking?

According to The Peak Performance Center, critical thinking refers to the ability to exercise careful evaluation or judgement in order to determine the authenticity, accuracy, worth, validity or value of something.

In addition to precise, objective analysis, critical thinking involves synthesis, evaluation, reflection and reconstruction. And rather than strictly breaking down the information, critical thinking explores other elements that could have an influence on conclusions.

Why does thinking critically matter on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a platform that can deliver you immense value in one or more of the below-mentioned ways:

1. Expose you to new thoughts and diverse perspectives around the same thought (Just the way people put forward the highlight reel of their lives on Instagram and Facebook, the intellectuals and thought leaders put forward their best and most radical thoughts out on LinkedIn)
2. Help expand your network to people who are contemplating on ideas and challenges similar to yours
3. And definitely help you connect to new professional opportunities

The algorithms of LinkedIn are trying their best to help you reach ‘your goals’. It is constantly looking out for any clue to understand which thoughts and topics engage you, who are the people that interest you and each of the things that you Like, Celebrate, Support, Love, find Insightful or are Curious about.

In one of her articles, The LinkedIn Algorithm Explained, Courtney Johnson gives a full breakdown of each and every part of the LinkedIn algorithm, and how that affects you, your posts, and your social media strategy

So, if you are able to see it, LinkedIn’s algorithm is an enormously powerful tool at your service.

But, therein also lies the problem…

Let’s take this example:

Let’s try to understand how our mind possibly interprets this post:

1. It poses a very relevant question that most of us can relate to. Since one can relate to it, it makes sense to respond as well.
2. The fact that the response is a binary choice between a ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ makes it a cognitively less demanding task.
3. The fact that one can simply respond by clicking a button makes it a physically less demanding task.
4. 68,000 people already have an opinion on this. And even I have an opinion to contribute to this discussion.

And, now let’s apply some critical thinking lens to it:

1. What kind of value is this ‘Marketing Manger’ trying to create for himself with the responses to this question?
2. What kind of value does responding to this question deliver to others as well as myself?
3. When I respond to this post, what do I communicate with the algorithms of LinkedIn?

I will leave the 1st and 2nd question up to you to answer. Let me try to answer the 3rd question for you.

I would be telling LinkedIn that this topic matters to me (it is closer to my professional or ideological goals), I am interested in networking with Mr Marketing Manager and similar people, and I Celebrate or Like this discussion.

Not only this, I would also end up cluttering the feeds of others in my network, to the extent that some serious LinkedIn users would even be forced to put me on mute.

Let’s take another example:

We could keep applying the same critical thinking lens to this as well and we would observe how someone has exploited our feelings of national pride.

We mostly take pride in our nation, and we know that expressing pride in one’s nation is a good thing. And perhaps that is why 70,000 individuals have expressed their opinions here.

And it keeps getting weirder- no one knows the name of the girl in the photograph. Nor is any of this love and support ever going to reach this brave girl.

Most of us have a natural inclination towards being compassionate and altruistic (in our own capacities though) to the unfortunate, and we know that sharing love and compassion is a good thing. And perhaps that is why 52,000 individuals acted on this fundamental human instinct only to be exploited by this gentleman for his personal gains.

And yes, I saved the best for the last…

Do you know what is written in these 43,000 comments?

Yes, you possibly guessed it, these are all birthday wishes for this well-chosen photograph of a random child. A smiling face to gain your trust, a physical disability to gain your compassion, an altruistic and low cognitive effort call to action ‘Wish me’ repeated twice — and there it is, 278,000 people have fallen for it!

Denise Shelton has written a brilliant article on Medium in which she puts forward a similar analysis - How Your Friendly Social Media Gestures are Being Used for Nefarious Purposes . I would recommend you to read it.

If you have been responding to such psychologically exploitative posts, please take care of yourself. You might be vulnerable to being conned in real world, and scammed in the digital world.

In a research paper titled, ‘Psychological Vulnerabilities to Deception,
for Use in Computer Security’, published by Jim Yuill, Dorothy Denning and Fred Feer, they have put together a comprehensive table of psychological vulnerabilities that make a person prone to deception. A portion of the table is presented below.

Eileen Dombrowski, an experienced teacher, examiner, workshop leader and author, writes in one of her articles:

“Thinking critically, it seems to me, demands facing up to our own fallibility, and preparing ourselves to filter knowledge claims with greater self-knowledge. We need to apply both self-awareness and reasoning.”

Below are two excerpts from an article by Olga Khazan, “Can you Spot a Liar?” (interview with Maria Konnikova, a psychologist and author of the book, The Confidence Game), The Atlantic, January 12, 2016.

Khazan: Why are we more likely to fall for cons when we’re feeling isolated and lonely?

Konnikova: Emotional vulnerability is one of the things that unites victims of cons, in the sense that it’s not so much a personality trait, as where you are in your life. Because what happens when you’re down, when you’re vulnerable, there’s change going on, and your world no longer makes sense the way that it used to, so you’re particularly vulnerable to people who make sense of it for you. You want that meaning. You want that sense of connection and con artists are very happy to supply it for you.

Khazan: One thing I found surprising was that cons are under reported. Why is that?

Konnikova: Part of it is that people really value their reputations, so they don’t want others to know that they fell victim. The other thing is that they value their reputation so much is that they don’t want themselves to know. They would much rather believe that they were the victims of bad luck than that they were victims of a con artist. Our self-deception is incredibly powerful, because we have this very strong protective mechanism where we want to think of ourselves in the best possible light. No one wants to think of themselves as a sucker or as someone who falls for some con artist, who to someone else might seem obvious.

Those are the best victims, the ones who have already been victimized once, because they’ve done such a good job rationalizing that they’ll do it again.

Adding a little bit of critical thinking to your thinking tools will not just save you from being exploited, it might as well put your professional and personal lives in a better perspective. It’s going to be a long journey, but you and me are in it together.

This article is just the beginning. I plan to take you on a journey to the deepest and the darkest crevices of the human mind.

But the only fuel that will keep me driving are the generous claps from you, for very few are going to make it this far and you are one of them.

If you are interested in reading further here are the links to the research papers and articles referred to in this article:

Types of thinking by The Peak Performance Center

The LinkedIn Algorithm Explained by Courtney Johnson

How Your Friendly Social Media Gestures are Being Used for Nefarious Purposes by Denise Shelton

Psychological Vulnerabilities to Deception, for Use in Computer Security by Jim Yuill, Dorothy Denning and Fred Feer

Big lies, clever cons, and TOK ways of knowing, Part 3: Is critical thinking utterly futile? by Eileen Dombrowski

Can you Spot a Liar? by Olga Khazan