Summary:
Everyone knows about the “Like”
button on Facebook. Well what most people don’t know is that this simple button
can tell a lot about your personality traits. They can reveal things such as
sexual orientation, drug use, and religious affiliation, according to a study
that analyzed the online behavior of thousands of volunteers. What you like
defines you and researchers have known for decades that the people’s person attributes
– gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, and personality type – correlate with
their choice of products, concepts, and activities. You know there is a
difference of people who go to the Opera as opposed to a NASCAR race. Michal
Kosinski, a psychologist at the University of Cambridge, and Microsoft Research
led a team to discover just how much the like button on Facebook predicts our
personality traits. To get the data on intelligence so that Kosinski would have
something to compare with the likes on Facebook he came up with a myPersonality
app on Facebook. The volunteers of the myPersonality app answer survey
questions and take a series of psychological tests that measure things such as
intelligence, competitiveness, extraversion versus introversion, and general
satisfaction with life. Kosinski and his team will not only get this data but
also data from the user’s profile and friends network. Facebook likes are an
amazingly good predictor of personal attributes. The most accurate predictions
were for gender (93%) and race (95%). However, it was still able to predict
more sensitive personal attributes such as homosexuality (88% men, 75% women),
religion (82%), political party (85%), and even use of cigarettes, alcohol, and
drugs (73%, 70%, and 65%). When Facebook’s in-house social scientist were
contacted about this discovery they were hardly surprised. Facebook allows you
to share things you fine interesting and it also allows you to login on to
third party sites so you can take your likes with you everywhere.
Correlation:
We have been speaking about the
brain and how it works. This correlates directly with that topic because we are
unknowingly “liking” things on a social media site that defines us. This really
brings to new light how things we find interesting online plays in our
personalities.
Personal Reaction:
I find this a bit scary because
this is public information and employers can look at this data and can judge
how you will work based on things you like on Facebook. We might not need to
come in for interviews or meet people in person for them to know what we are
like. And I’m not sure just how accurate this research is because sometimes I
like something on Facebook to acknowledge what a person has said not that I necessarily
agree with it. It’ll be interesting to see this research in more depth.
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