We can and do draw detailed psychographic categories with a few data points, but it's far from clear whether the results (and especially the details) are actually correct.

I think "since the 50s" should be taken as evidence against these models. Myers-Briggs first came into vogue in the late 1950s, and has been used for career counseling and hiring since despite being utterly unfit for purpose. Priming work dates to the 70s, and now it appears that many of the long-term uses advertising relies on don't replicate. The 'decoy effect' that drives many product strategies was formalized in the 1980s, and recent work suggests it exists only under very narrow conditions. Modern industry leaders like the Food and Brand Lab have apparently spent the last 20 years publishing absolute nonsense. Even results 'validated' with A/B testing are in many cases just noise from misusing statistics.

Precisely because we didn't have microtargeting or consumer-level feedback, all we've had since the 1950s is the belief that we can build and use these models. We know ads basically work, they improve brand recognition and reputation, but the Don Draper psychological rationales are essentially just-so stories written in the absence of data.

(As far as CA, no one seems to have dug up any seriously unusual patterns in 2016 voting. So unless they paired high-impact psychological targeting with an elaborate statistical coverup, what they actually did with the data wasn't exceptional.)

> This has been known in the advertising world since the 50s

Any reference from the 50s?

Also, anyone care to recommend modern references that go into these topics? (David Ogilvy comes to mind but that's from the 60s).

Psychographic segmentation is an evolution of psychoanalysis; in particular Jaques Lacan, whose work in the 50s took the general ideas of Freudian psychoanalysis and applied them to larger phenomenon -- namely how language and symbolism can be used to pluck emotional strings and influence the minds of groups of like-minded people. An ad man in the 1950s would certainly have been aware of his work. The folks from CA have gone on record about the influence of Lacan, so it's not remotely a stretch.

Edit: For a reference, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/75bb/e8a5de1fef2b9da44ca1ed... (dense as heck, but imagine you're an ad man from the 50s when reading it)

this is a little dense, but the preface has a nice statement on neurobiology, and wikipedia has some interesting articles on neuroscience and cognitive psychology. I suppose I'm looking for a popsci book on how computer science, psychology, neuroscience, etc all came together in the last decade to become so effective in hacking our brains and influencing our decisions. Or perhaps it's been there all along just now it's getting more attention.

> Or perhaps it's been there all along just now it's getting more attention.

It's been a slow build to add layers of targeting on as the media machine grows. It started out with time-based targeting by showing ads for home goods during the daytime (e.g. soap operas were used to sell soap to housewives). Cable TV was a big step forward -- you could craft shows that appealed to narrower demographics like 8-14 year old boys and then sell ads targeting those demographics.

Psychographic segmentation became prevalent along with cable TV and direct mail, but it was limited to a few dozen "personas" until Google came along and allowed keyword targeting, which then gave way to social targeting. It got exponentially more effective with each step, which is why it seemed to come out of nowhere.