> narratives were his weapons. First we used focus groups and qualitative
> observation to unpack the perceptions of a given population and learn what
> people cared about—term limits, the deep state, draining the swamp, guns, and
> the concept of walls to keep out immigrants were all explored in 2014,
> several years before the Trump campaign. We then came up with hypotheses for
> how to sway opinions. CA tested these hypotheses with target segments in
> online panels or experiments to see whether they performed as the team
> expected, based on the data. We also pulled Facebook profiles, looking for
> patterns in order to build a neural network algorithm that would help us make
> predictions.
>
> A select minority of people exhibit traits of narcissism (extreme
> self-centeredness), Machiavellianism (ruthless self-interest), and
> psychopathy (emotional detachment). In contrast to the Big Five traits found
> in everyone to some degree as part of normal psychology—openness,
> conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—these “dark
> triad” traits are maladaptive, meaning that those who exhibit them are
> generally more prone to antisocial behavior, including criminal acts. From
> the data CA collected, the team was able to
