FB ‘likes’ reveal your personality

NEW YORK: A computer programme that analyses your Facebook “likes” may be a better judge of your personality than your closest friends and family, according to research out on Tuesday.
The study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences was led by researchers at the University of Cambridge and Stanford University.
Through data analysis, computers can be a better judge of people’s personalities and psychological traits, the authors said.
“In the future, computers could be able to infer our psychological traits and react accordingly, leading to the emergence of emotionally-intelligent and socially skilled machines,” said lead author Wu Youyou, from Cambridge’s Psychometrics Centre.
The findings also raise concerns about privacy, leading the study authors to call for policies that give users full control of their digital footprint.
The study used a sample of 86,220 volunteers on Facebook who completed a 100-item personality questionnaire using an app called “myPersonality”. They also gave researchers access to their Facebook “likes”.
The subjects’ self-reported personality scores showed where they stood in terms of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism — the five major personality traits.
Researchers found that a person’s psychological profile could also be revealed by which pages they “liked”. For instance, liking “Salvador Dali” or “meditation” would suggest a high degree of openness, the researchers said.