Psychology researchers have performed an interesting study on the ability of social network users to understand/judge different aspects of other users' personalities based on their social network profile/page. The study is called "What Elements of an Online Social Networking Profile Predict Target-Rater Agreement in Personality Impressions?" by David C. Evans, Samuel D. Gosling and Anthony Carroll. [Thanks to William Cohen for pointing me to it.]
The attributes of a user's personality that they investigated included being disciplined/casual, alternative/traditional, neurotic/unemotional, cooperative/competitive, and extroverted/introverted.
The study found that women are both better at assessing the personality of others and at describing their own personality (presumably by providing more meaningful answers to profile questions on their pages). In order to check the accuracy of the personality judgments, the authors compared each assessment to the user's own assessment of themselves. - I wonder if the conjecture that males are not as good judges of their own personality, might also explain the second result?
Other interesting findings is that a user's personality is best described by: i) a video they find funny, ii) a description of "what makes them glad to be alive", iii) the most embarrassing thing they ever did, or iv) the proudest thing they ever did. While things like their favorite (or least favorite) book, movie, etc. were found to be not very useful for assessing one's personality.
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2 comments:
This was one of the best presentations of the conference, too. Keep an eye out for it on videolectures.
Interesting to know.
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