Psychographics: the behavioural analysis that helped Cambridge Analytica know voters' minds

the data crunching company’s approach represents a step change in how analytics can today be used as a tool to generate insights – and to exert influence... While it also used demographic segments to identify groups of voters... Cambridge Analytica also segmented using psychographics... demographics are informational. Psychographics are behavioural – a means to segment by personality...
traditionally been two routes to ascertaining someone’s personality... get to know them really well ... get them to take a personality test ... Cambridge Analytica found a third way... Aleksandr Kogan, sold them access to 270,000 personality tests completed by Facebook users through an online app ... [plus] from the test-takers’ friends ... added up to some 50m people...
had not all taken personality tests.... Kosinski ... figured out a way to reverse engineer a personality profile from Facebook activity ... on the basis of 300 likes... able to predict someone’s personality profile with the same accuracy as a spouse.