We now live in an era where technological advancements and unbridled capitalism have created algorithms and other tracking techniques to not only monitor our interests and our purchases, but to also manipulate us into purchasing items on the fringe with strategically placed advertisements, offers, or other suggestive psychological-based sales and marketing tactics. This control is not only extended to those who are playing into the consumer role, but the psychology and experimentation becomes even more concerning in regards to the worker.
When it comes down to how the processes of corporate industrial psychology are applied and practiced there is no clear governing or regulative authority, and when it comes down to the individual, the lines begin to become blurred between what is simply marketing strategy and what is strategic and manipulative psychological experimentation, both in the role of consumer or worker.
It seems as if most individuals simply accept that advanced manipulation tactics will be applied within their day-to-day lives, and they foolishly pay no regard to how these techniques are changing the ways by which we function as a community, or how the collection and storage of such information may impact themselves and their futures.
Each day we are not only being tracked throughout our usage of social media, home electronics, and the internet, but we are also continuously monitored by facial recognition programs, automatic license plate readers, membership cards and rewards programs, along with smartphone tracking. Much of this is done without regard to our ability to give consent, and often if even consented to, the consent is expressed through wordy and mostly unread privacy policies and terms of use. Even if consent is given, often times the research and practice of marketing psychology and corporate industrial organizational psychology gives little regard to any risks associated with such experimentation.
The dangers of uninhibited psychological experimentation and manipulation has since long been proven. Corporate industrial organizational psychology has been used since the 1920’s to create operant conditioning and a singular uniformity of pacified consumers out of human individuals, there has been no regard given toward how this type of practiced psychology can effect, create, or otherwise exacerbate mental illness and other medical conditions in human individuals. While medical psychology now has a focus on maintaining certain ethical standards, such as those of the American Psychological Association, corporate industrial psychology does not fit within the same confines of study and practice, and thus does not mindfully adhere to such standards.
The psychology implemented behind mass consumerism has created a culture of acceptance toward data collection and privacy violations. We are further blinded to the corporate industrial psychological perspective as we live in an age of unconstitutional massive governmental surveillance and data collection, and for most individuals and activists this is where our focus has been maintained.
When individuals maintain the role of the worker in today’s society they are not only subjected to their employer’s brand, company ethics, and beliefs, they are typically forced into adhering to corporate policy and guidelines (which were created through corporate industrial psychological practice and study) or they risk loosing their livelihood. Today’s worker is, in a way, forced to subjugate themselves to ethics which may directly conflict with their own ideals, or ideals that are otherwise questionable, and against that which is considered humane or ethical. While factors such as these are clear and consented upon going into a job, the positional obedience, emotional trading, and normalization of the tasks by which we conflict with can create cognitive dissonance in a worker which can both create or exacerbate psychological illness.
As workers, we expect corporate industrial research and psychology to play into both quality assurance and training. Often this type of research is done in the form of surveys, video surveillance, recorded and monitored telephone calls, computer and internet usage tracking, along with corporate coaching, training, and other feedback opportunities.
Often overlooked and rarely (if ever) consented upon is being subjected to “Secret Shopping”, or “Mystery Shopping” while maintaining the role of a worker. While many activist workers may be aware of and despise both governmental and corporate industrial informants – workers, including independent contractors and those working on sales commissions, are conditioned by corporate managers to fear the “Mystery Shopper”.
Mystery shoppers are people hired to pose as regular consumers who test the behavior of the worker without their explicit consent. Theindustry of the “Mystery Shopper” claims to abide by ethical standards, as set by the Mystery Shopping Professionals Association (MSPA), these standards fail to take the psychology and risks of the worker into consideration, thus proving that there is no intent to dignify or provide any thought to the subjects of this experimentation. Another often broken standard is that the information gathered during such experimentation should not be used to punish workers, however there is no direct enforcement of such ethics set forward by the MSPA (essentially an industry lobbying group) and the act of Mystery Shopping not only provides an opportunity for corporate managers to punish their workers for supposedly failing on some point of behavior, it can and has led to employment termination.
“Imagine the following scenario: a mysterious woman walks into a supermarket. As she approaches the entrance she is greeted by one of the workers who hands her a shopping basket and smiles, but she’s not wearing a name tag – 5 points deducted.
The mysterious woman continues into the supermarket and walks up to the deli counter, where she meets another worker who is busy carving up some ham. She asks him where she might find unscented sunscreen, and he tells her it’s in aisle number six, but doesn’t escort her all the way there – 10 points deducted.
The mysterious woman finally reaches the checkout and pays for her purchases. The checkout girl is very nice and smiles, but forgets to use the company’s official close of sale salutation – which is have a ‘nice day’ – 20 points deducted.
This is mystery shopping, and the anonymous woman was a mystery shopper. She had been hired by the supermarket’s management team to pretend she was a customer and gather information about how the workers were performing.
The information is then given to management – who decide if they will reprimand the workers.
Excerpt from: The Ethics of Mystery Shopping – ACU 2011
Arguably, there are desired effects of the mystery shopper system. One of those is certainly to trigger mental illness. The implementation of this system exists to cause anxiety & create uncertainty within the workplace. If a worker is unable to be certain about whether or not a fake persona is going to try and manipulate them, regardless of industry, they will certainly become more anxious. In a higher state of anxiety, is it not only easier to control all the workers and keep them subjugated, it also allows for the employer to create new levers to demote and punish workers. In regards to vulnerable workers with mental illness, or those who are at risk of developing such conditions, mystery shopping also has the potential to create or exacerbate these conditions.
Currently this system allows for corporations to develop large programs to psychologically traumatize and control their workers through generating more stress and mental illness. It also interrupts workers from creating their own livelihood – whenever a mystery shopper uses the time of a worker focused upon sales commissions, it prevents them from earning commissions from legitimate consumers. With the practice of mystery shopping expanding into other industries, such as the health care industry, this widely unregulated experimentation does not only create the aforementioned effects on workers, it has the potential to both risk the privacy of individual consumers seeking care, and to further limit vital-resources for individuals who may critically need to utilize them for their own well-being. Even the American Medical Association (AMA) has doctors who express concern with mystery shopping within the health care industry.
Mystery shoppers are certainly an unseen issue, but with the modernization of the industry and with vulnerable or disenfranchised workers continuing to seek ‘side-hustles’ that provide supplemental income, workers are not only being scammed while seeking to be employed by corporations such as Popp Communication‘s SecretShopper.com [Golden Valley, MN] and BestMark [Minnetonka, MN], but they also face mistreatment from within these established and “reputable” companies such as low pay, uncompensated travel expenses, wage-theft, wage-loss, and a lack of benefits to make mystery shopping fulfilling work.
Today there is a huge movement toward the ‘Uber-ization’ of the industry, which has created immense fleets of mystery shoppers who are ready to infiltrate and report at a moment’s notice. This includes phone applications such as Gigwalk, GoSpotCheck, the Field Agent Mystery Shopper App, along with many other applications and opportunities. It is with the increase of workers fulfilling the mystery shopper role, along with the high turn around of mystery shoppers, that has helped to create a practice of non-existent enforcement of ethical behaviors along with accurate or fair reporting from those who work as a mystery shopper.
If you are an individual seeking to work as a mystery shopper know that this is an undesirable and unsustainable career… and while it may seem worth the hassle for a few extra dollars, do the benefits truly outweigh the hassle, risk, and ethical dilemma of informing on fellow workers? In regards to regulation it is clear that the conflict here is between those who want psychologically abusive corporate tactics to be regulated and those who do not want to pay any mind to the practice at all… however these two conflicting perspectives will do little to nothing to protect consumers and workers from these manipulative practices.
Unregulated, the mystery shopping industry will not only maintain it’s current course but it could also heighten the amount of risk that comes from performing such experimentation. In theory, there are some states, counties, and cities that may already have rules and statutes which could be subjected onto mystery shopper corporations and workers. These rules range from wire-tapping to third-party consent laws, however accountability and enforcement against mystery shoppers and their agencies has yet to be fully realized beneath this jurisdiction. Two states that takes better regulatory measures would be California and Nevada, Of which, Nevada requires mystery shopping assignments need to be assigned through a licensed private investigation company. Anyone caught conducting an assignment without a license in Nevada can face fines of $2,500 or more.
While imposing regulation and creating the reformation of law and licensing to allow for mystery shoppers to eventually operate within a more ethical manner is one thing that can certainly be advocated for, the risks involved with the psychology of workers cannot be guaranteed unless practices such as this come to an end.
In essence, these corporate informants are engaged in a corporate version of “gang stalking”, or intense, long-term, unconstitutional surveillance and harassment, also known as Zersetzung (German for “decomposition” or “corrosion” – a reference to the severe psychological, social, and financial effects upon the victim. American and British victims have described the process as “no-touch torture”.), or rather, tactics performed by the Stasi (East German State Police). This terminology may, at times, be used to describe the feelings and symptoms of possible mental illness, but we must take that into consideration along with the risk of exacerbating any illness prior to allowing for mystery shopping to to take place. Regardless, we know that these tactics can be verified as continued, if not by corporations than certainly by federal and state informants.
Collectively, we live in the day and age where the concept of universal basic income is neither unfamiliar or unfeasible, and with such a practice, the need for workplace dehumanization and the correlated psychological manipulation of the worker could be brought to an end. Although these concepts clearly go against the oligarchy and the psychology behind capitalism, not only should the practice of corporate industrial psychology be put to an end, but so should the capitalistic ideal of endless consumerism, as it makes use of our finite resources.
This form of non-consensual human experimentation must end. It can begin with banning mystery shopping and corporate industrial organizational psychologists from our places of work, and end with a full paradigm shift toward betterment and the restoration of humanity – for the worker, the disenfranchised, and the vulnerable.