Your Online Profile Actually Tells a Lot About You

An anonymous reader writes "Despite all the media reports that your Facebook profile is giving the wrong impression, a psychological study shows people really can understand your personality from your online profile. Turns out you're not giving the wrong impression with your profile; you're giving the right impression to the wrong people. You can actually learn more about someone's Agreeableness from their online profile than from a first date."

Of course this assumes that when you filled it out

you were being completely honest. I know that I certainly would never think to put a fake age, fake name or fake job when I fill out a profile online. ...nosireebub.

Re:Of course this assumes that when you filled it

It also assumes that you put a decent amount of effort into it. What does a sparse profile say about me? That I'm lazy? That I don't really care about MySpace? Who knows?

Re:Of course this assumes that when you filled it

Or maybe that you actually cared about your security and the concept of identity theft. Or maybe you just prefer meeting gurls in real life, as opposed to some vague flirtation online that could easily have been with someone lying about their details.

Or maybe you are just way to busy spamming slashdot and raiding Sunwell (or whining on the AoC forums) to care about some stupid MySpace/Facebook page.

Re:Of course this assumes that when you filled it

The fake answers are just as interesting in some ways. When I see a fave album list that looks too carefully constructed (that perfect mix of obscure and popular, with those two horrible but the entire planet loves songs) that tells me as much about the person as an honest list would.

Re:Of course this assumes that when you filled it

what if i actually like obscure and popular music, and have bad taste, you insentitive clod!

Re:Of course this assumes that when you filled it

That is why on the NYT registration page I am a 16 year old female attorney from Afghanistan named Osama Bin Laden. Honest!

Re:Of course this assumes that when you filled it

That is why on the NYT registration page I am a 16 year old female attorney from Afghanistan named Osama Bin Laden

That just tells me you're a pathological liar with a fetish for far-west Asian teens and extreme hatred of the US government.

And you also read the NY Times.

Just another case of...

People post too much crap about themselves online. Facebook has some decent "security" features about whom can see their profiles, but people tend leave the option checked "anyone in my network" can see my profile without realizing the ramifications. Anyway, yeah, does the FA really surprise anyone???

I agree

It says you're the kind of person that has a Facebook profile.

Re:I agree

It says you're the kind of person that has a Facebook profile.

and thereby, most surely, are a target market.

The In-security Blanket

It's really surprising just how much we disconnect ourselves from our many social inhibitions when communicating over the internet versus when we're actually interacting with others in public, even when we're fully aware that the internet is far less private than physically going outside to any real-world, public location. On a sub-conscious level, mere text on a screen is somehow far less threatening to us than seeing another person or hearing their voice, even though the opposite is probably more true. (Likely due to the lengthy delay in reaction to our own actions, in addition to severely limited feedback accompanying those reactions.)

Perhaps if we retired text communications in favor of real-time teleconferencing, where you actually have to see who you're talking to, you'd see people become a lot more careful about what they say and do on the internet from day to day.

Re:The In-security Blanket

It's really surprising just how much we disconnect ourselves from our many social inhibitions when communicating over the internet versus when we're actually interacting with others in public

I know what you mean: I'm naked while typing this.

Gold star for you

So you've figured out from my facebook page that I'm an antisocial loser with no social skills. HOLY CRAP; are you some sort of detective?

Re:Gold star for you

So you've figured out from my facebook page that I'm an antisocial loser with no social skills.

It was only a hunch until you posted on Slashdot as well.

I'm sorry; I can't go out with you.

An analysis of your posting history shows too many "Informative" mods and not enough "Funny". I'm looking for someone a little less serious-minded, someone who's not afraid to risk a "Troll" mod in the spirit of adventure.

Summary incorrect.

This paper is not about Facebook. It's about a Facebook personality-assessment app ("YouJustGetMe") that allows people to do a personality self-assessment, then create a profile with the app based on likes and dislikes. This "YouJustGetMe" profile would then appear on the user's Facebook profile.

So the research question is not "Can people assess others' personalities based on their Facebook profiles," but, rather, "Can people assess others' personalities based on their own assessments of their own personalities," a very different thing. It then looked for interrater agreement between the writer of the profile and the viewer of the profile.

This is a salient point because what is revealed in a real Facebook profile is very little, and can actually be nothing (like mine--I just use it to keep tabs on my friends strewn around the world who use it). It's totally uncontrolled. The researchers addressed this by placing much tighter controls on the profile creation, limiting it to personality-specific items.

The research is still interesting, but not as interesting as the Slashdot summary makes it sound. It does, however, seem to have some major selection flaws (not a random sample), but I can't seem to load the paper to check on that.

Re:Summary incorrect. --Caveats

Finally got the paper to download. It's interesting, and was obviously a very serious study that required a lot of work. Good on them for that.

But the mean interrater correlation is 0.41, meaning that it only explains about 17% of the shared variance. This looks to me like another psych study that mistakes statistical significance for practical significance.

To put it another way, there was really only an average of 17% agreement between rater and writer in their assessments. What this study finds is that judging people based on their profile, while not completely useless, isn't very useful.

To put it another way... It's basically just as you would assume: You can get an idea of what someone is like based on what they present about themselves, but the picture is going to be far from complete.

So, let's rename this Slashdot article correctly: "Your Online Profile Actually Tells a Little About You!"

Yuhhuh

You can actually learn more about someone's Agreeableness from their online profile than from a first date.

A statement only Slashdot readers could believe.

Re:Duh

The only remotely suprising thing was that women were both easier to understand and understood people better through profiles.

For me it isn't, but maybe just 'cause I'm a girl who's spent far too much time in heavily female online communities. I think it's just an extension of how people work in the real world; women, just by generally being more communicative (not being sexist so much as that's what most studies find), drop more hints, and probably 'cause they drop so many know what to look for.

Re:Talking without communicating??

Communication operates at many levels.

You may agree that the specific subject is a subject of "low importance". However, what they are engaging in is building the conext of communication, which is a signal "I am here for you, sharing my time with a Null topic, and I am available if you have something more difficult to discuss."

Men often use the heuristic that such material "worsens the noise-signal ratio". At the extremes, you get taciturn men whose entire speech for the day is "Your wall's burning."

Re:Duh

I think she wants to have sex with me.

Re:Employers look!

My facebook profile is hidden from all searches, you can't find it unless I add you first.

Just go to Privacy > Search

There choose:
Search visibiliy > Friends

Uncheck all boxes and Save changes.

I suggest to everyone looking for a job to do the same.

Re:Employers look!

I can tell you as an employer, we scan all the popular "social networking" sites before looking at someone as a possible employee.

Hell, that's what I'm counting on - my own personal website has a far more diversified list of my projects (as well as source code, schematics, and other bits and pieces) than you'll ever get from a resume. Of course then again it's not on some trendy "social network" site - it's my name, as a domain, that I've owned for years. I figure, if they're going to look, why not show off? (And not in the suggestive 18-25 girl sense - though being single again, I wish our recruiters would look for that sort of thing.)

Re:lightweight article

Ah, but you don't actually need to use your real name - just a given name and a surname. As an example, I used to call myself "Devoc Winter" before I deleted my account. Nothing whatsoever like my real name, so some of my real life friends did call BS at first, but quite a few of them don't use their real names either.

As you said, though, it does come down to whom you befriend on Facebook - your real life friends, your online friends or a combination.

Re:lightweight article

They don't. You can lie. There are a quite a few Facebook profiles for fictional characters. I know a few people who only list their first name and last initial. But that's not the point. If you have a Facebook profile it is because you want people to be able to find it and contact you. Lying about your name would just be pointless, especially if you are signed up on a college network which will list your .edu e-mail address which could be easily looked up in a directory anyway. I have no problem with pesudo-anonymous social networking, but that is not what Facebook is for.