The behavior economy: The creation of behavior as an object of online surveillance

Abstract

While it’s well known that behavior is the target of systems of online surveillance, explanations of what behavior actually is are much harder to come by. This article provides a brief account of behavior’s twentieth century appearance and journey to a position of centrality in common-sense understandings of who we are. Given that traditional understandings of the right to privacy and self-determination are founded on a liberal humanist understanding of the subject, dominant critiques of online surveillance are seriously compromised by the fact that behavior cannot, strictly speaking, be accommodated within this intellectual framework.

Keywords:

• Behavior
• behaviorism
• identity
• privacy
• surveillance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 While it is true that some kinds of non-behavioral data have value in this economy (e.g. a person’s name and address), this data only has value inasmuch as it provides a fixed identifier that allows behavioral data to be attributed to a single person.

2 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=habit%2Cbehavior&year_start=1850&year_end=2000&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chabit%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cbehavior%3B%2Cc0.

3 Unlike Pavlov’s work, operant conditioning was a framework applicable to conscious, voluntary actions, giving it much wider reach as an explanation for and potential modifier of human behavior: “When a bit of behaviour is followed by a certain kind of consequence, it is more likely to occur again, and a consequence having this effect is called a reinforcer. Food, for example, is a reinforcer to a hungry organism; anything the organism does that is followed by the receipt of food is more likely to be done again whenever the organism is hungry. Some stimuli are called negative reinforcers; any response which reduces the intensity of such a stimulus – or ends it – is more likely to be emitted when the stimulus recurs. Thus, if a person escapes from a hot sun when he moves under cover, he is more likely to move under cover when the sun is again hot. The reduction in temperature reinforces the behaviour it is “contingent upon” – that is, the behaviour it follows. Operant conditioning also occurs when a person simply avoids a hot sun – when, roughly speaking, he escapes from the threat of a hot sun.” (Skinner 1973, 31–32)

4 It might be useful to remind the reader here that, while this article includes an account of the origins of behavior within psychology, and while not only behavior but other terms used, such as identity and habit, have specialized meanings within psychology, this is not a psychology paper, and these terms are being used in line with their broader application outside the discipline.