Reply to Sharp et al.: Psychological targeting produces robust effects
Matz, Kosinski, Nave and Stillwell reply to a comment by Sharp and colleagues, who suggested that the original findings refute the effectiveness of psychological targeting. The authors disagree. They argue that the commenters' reasoning about how often targeting should succeed misunderstands statistical inference, since experiments do not need a perfect success rate to generate reliable effects, and they offer an everyday comparison involving education and income.
Matz, Kosinski, Nave and Stillwell reply to a comment by Sharp and colleagues, who suggested that the original findings refute the effectiveness of psychological targeting. The authors disagree. They argue that the commenters' reasoning about how often targeting should succeed misunderstands statistical inference, since experiments do not need a perfect success rate to generate reliable effects, and they offer an everyday comparison involving education and income.
Written from the abstract as shown on the OpenAlex record, read 2026-11-04.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
Matz, S. C., Kosinski, M., Nave, G., & Stillwell, D. J. (2018). Reply to Sharp et al.: Psychological targeting produces robust effects. PNAS, 115(34), E7891. doi:10.1073/pnas.1811106115.