Are you being recorded? Thanks to the ubiquity of CCTV and camera phones, the answer is more than ever before likely to
be “Yes”. Add to this the growth of wearable technology such asGoogle Glass and people are
increasingly exposed to devices that can monitor and record them, whether they
realise it or not.
The privacy implications are obvious, but also interesting to
psychologists such as myself, are how such invasions of privacy – real or
perceived – change the way people behave in everyday life.
My colleagues and I have been examining the ways people change
their behaviour when they are being recorded. In a typical psychology
experiment, participants are aware that they are being watched, and a range of
equipment monitors their responses, from computers and cameras to eye-trackers
and electrodes. Do people in this scenario behave the same way as they’d
behave, unwatched, in everyday life? While this may be true for some people and
some behaviour, it is not in all cases. Thankfully, with some ingenuity, we can
investigate whether being monitored changes how people behave. This should be a
crucial topic for psychologists.
Research using eye-tracking devices, led by Eleni
Nasioupolous andAlan Kingstone from the University of
British Columbia, Evan Risko at the University of Waterloo in Canada, and myself, provides a
good example. In several situations participants were left alone in a room with
a calendar featuring a scantily-clad female, behind which lay a hidden spy
camera. When people were free of any recording device, they usually looked at
the calendar. However, when they wore an eye-tracking device, which records the
wearer’s field of view and their eye movements within it (just like Google
Glass) they stopped behaving naturally and avoided looking at the saucy image.
In other words they were aware that what they were looking at
was being watched and changed their behaviour accordingly. This reinforces our
natural assumption that we can’t take for granted that people will behave
normally when they know they’re being watched, both in lab experiments and when
using wearable technology out in the world.
Those aware that what they are looking at is being monitored
seem to act in a more socially acceptable manner, something that is consistent
with a range of behavioural research. The presence of others leads us to act in
a way that converges with social
norms.
Security cameras – even a picture of someone’s
eyes – can have the same effect by implying that someone is watching.
In our recent paper published in the British
Journal of Psychology we varied the amount of time that people had to get used
to wearing the eye-tracker. Surprisingly, we found that even after only 10
minutes of wearing the equipment, users essentially forgot about being monitored
and started acting normally again. Soon enough the socially acceptable
behaviour associated with being watched dissipated and they again spent time,
for example, looking at the calendar.
But while the implied social presence of another watching the
participant’s behaviour wore off surprisingly quickly, when they were reminded
that they were wearing the eye-tracker they once more reverted to a socially
acceptable pattern of behaviour and averted their eyes.
So what does this mean for privacy in the age of Google Glass
and other wearable smart devices? We shouldn’t assume that people will be
sufficiently self-aware to regulate what they’re doing while using wearable
technology. Our research shows that users can easily forget that they are
recording (or being recorded) and even with the best intentions could violate
the privacy of others.
This is good news for those of us who seek to measure and
understand natural behaviour, and particularly for using eye-trackers to
achieve this. However it could be bad news for those who champion the use of
wearable computing in everyday life. With even short periods of use, people may
stop being aware of their own actions and in doing so end up recording things
they would rather not be seen – look away now if you value your privacy.
Tom Foulsham receives funding from The
British Academy.
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