User:Peter.keller/Sandbox/Psychology of privacy

Summary
Privacy is a human need and ultimately comes down to the fundamental need for safety.

Privacy as a fundamental human need
"Knowledge is power" (Sir Francis Bacon, 1597)

People having knowledge about a person implies that those people have power upon that person. Knowledge can be abused, as can any form of power, i.e. the power provided by knowledge about a person can be abused to harm that person. Such abuse can be manipulating, blackmail, coercion or aspersing. Disclosing information about oneself thus puts us at the mercy of those who get to know that information.

The need for privacy is thus ultimately part of the fundamental need for safety - safety with respect to minimising the power of others over oneself. It's the need for self-determination, meaning not being at the mercy of others.

This is why we hesitate to give private information to others without adequate benefits. Who would tell their salary, their medical problems or their political opinions to any stranger just like that without an adequate benefit in return?

We thus tend to give away personal data if we perceive the benefits of doing so justifying the percieved risks of doing so. We make this tradeoff instinctively / subconciously and routinely all the time. We constantly make decisions about how much to disclose to whom about ourselves against what benefit and at what risk.

The perceived risk of disclosing private information (and usually the real risk as well) is low when we know the other person (i.e. having interacted with that person for a while), when the other person has a good reputation or when we think the other person will take some damage when abusing our personal data (us taking revenge, her being prosecuted and punished, etc.). In summary, when we trust that other person. In the opposite case, the perceived risk is high.

The perceived risk tends to diminish over time, if we have the feeling that the other person didn't abuse our private information. In the other case, the perceived risk diminishes drastically.

Typical benefits of us disclosing our private information are getting a service or better service (I need to tell the butcher what I like or else he doesn't know what to give me), not annoying the other person who is requiring the information and who would do me harm if I didn't give her the information and compromising the other person by letting her know I trust her and thereby expressing my expectation of her not to abuse my trust and making her feel that revenge can be expected if ever whe should abuse my trust. Thus a method to tie another person's interests to mine.