Privacy and Psychology

In the previous section, I defined privacy as the ability of an individual to control who knows what about them and their life. In this lesson, we’ll expand upon this simple definition and consider other ways that privacy can be defined and measured, drawing heavily upon work from the field of psychology.

Definitions of Privacy

In 1879, Thomas Cooley defined what we would describe today as privacy as the concept of “personal immunity,” or the basic human right “to be let alone.”¹ Over the course of the 20th Century, this concept was further refined by other authors. Some important psychological aspects of privacy, including the need to be able to escape from societal pressure to conform to social norms, were identified by the 1960s.² During the social upheaval from the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, an explicit link was made between individual privacy and personal freedom. Privacy was defined as “the claim of individuals, groups, or institutions to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others.”³

Our modern era of technological growth has seen these basic definitions largely ignored by companies profiting from information sharing. In early 1999, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy (in)famously said, “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”⁴ This statement was made in regard to an information sharing system that Sun was launching at the time, which raised significant privacy concerns. Industry players in the late 1990s went on to create lobbying organizations like the Online Privacy Alliance, whose real objectives were to try to prevent the government from passing privacy regulations.⁴

Elements of Privacy

One way of analyzing privacy is to consider what sorts of things a person wants to conceal from others. Selective self-disclosure of one’s life experiences, beliefs, and interests serves to create an image that other people see – an appearance.² Related concepts include those of privacy states: solitude (the separation of oneself from society), intimacy (shared experiences with a subset of other people), anonymity (going out in public with the expectation of not being identified or tracked), and reserve (selective disclosure of personal information or experiences).³ Privacy can be further divided into categories, such as bodily privacy, spatial privacy, communications privacy, proprietary privacy, intellectual privacy, decisional privacy, associational privacy, and behavioral privacy.⁵

The level and extent to which one practices self-disclosure (whether through words or behaviors) can be broken into zones as proposed by Koops et al. (2017). At the most guarded end of the zone spectrum is the personal zone, which contains private thoughts and behaviors that occur in solitude and are not shared with any other human being. Next is the intimate zone, which contains the disclosures and behaviors that a person chooses to share with partners, family members, and/or close friends. The third zone is the semi-private zone, in which a person is interacting with acquaintances, co-workers, or professionals. Finally, the opposite end of the spectrum occurs at the public zone, which occurs when a person is among strangers.⁵

Psychological Value of Privacy

One might wonder why we humans should be concerned with privacy at all, especially if Scott McNealy’s assertion is actually true. The answer is that privacy is important for human mental health.³ Specifically, privacy is important for the maintenance of the human body and mind, since it allows for a period of release from societal expectations. It is also important for human development, since it allows for personal growth. Privacy is also associated with enhanced feeling of personal well-being.⁶

Personal privacy gives an individual a respite from the pressure to conform to society’s expectation to keep up appearances. When privacy is denied, as often occurs in institutional settings like boarding schools and prisons, it is much easier to control a person’s behavior, since that person never has an opportunity to escape from the requirement of conformity. Similar results can occur in domestic situations with overbearing parents or partners, leading to the suppression of individuality and corresponding creativity.²

A person under constant surveillance – which is a very real threat with modern technology – will not have the opportunity to experience the restorative and developmental benefits of privacy. Constant surveillance, whether by governments or private entities, will eventually lead to negative health consequences for the entirety of society. An illustration of this phenomenon can be found in George Orwell’s 1984.

Notes and References