Alessandro Acquisti
First author of the 2015 Science review that organised research on privacy and human behaviour around uncertainty, context-dependence and malleability.
Who they are
The 2015 review lists Acquisti at the H. John Heinz III College, Carnegie Mellon University. Written with L. Brandimarte and G. Loewenstein, it described a study in which 48 per cent of the people most concerned about strangers learning their sexual orientation had revealed it publicly on a social network. It also described a gift card field experiment: 52.1 per cent of shoppers who started with an anonymous 10 dollar card kept it, while 9.7 per cent of those who started with a trackable 12 dollar card switched to the anonymous one.
The review weighed the explanation that broad attitudes and specific behaviours need not match, and found it incomplete. Choices about personal data, it argued, are also moved by misperceptions, social norms, emotions, rules of thumb and a preference for immediate rewards over later costs.
Key papers
Acquisti, A., Brandimarte, L., & Loewenstein, G. (2015). "Privacy and human behavior in the age of information." Science, 347(6221), 509-514. doi:10.1126/science.aaa1465.
Key ideas
"People value privacy more when they have it than when they do not," the review's reading of the gift card experiment. See The Privacy Paradox.
Sources
- Acquisti, Brandimarte and Loewenstein (2015), full text read (author PDF hosted by Carnegie Mellon University), 13 October 2026.