Using Facebook Data, Algorithm Predicts Personality Better Than Friends 80
sciencehabit writes: A new study of Facebook data shows that machines are now better at sussing out our true personalities than our friends. One of the standard methods for assessing personality is to analyze people's answers to a 100-item questionnaire with a statistical technique called factor analysis. There are five main factors that divide people by personality—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—which is why personality researchers call this test the Big Five. People can accurately predict how their friends will answer the Big Five questions. ... Compared with humans predicting their friends' personalities by filling out the Big Five questionnaire, the computer's prediction based on Facebook likes was almost 15% more accurate on average, the team reports online today in PNAS (abstract). Only people's spouses were better than the computer at judging personality.
Uhm... (Score:1, Insightful)
Haven't they used the same data to both build and test the model? That's Methodology 101 fail right there.
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Yup, and they take Facebook Friend == friend. Cambridge, really? How embarrassing,
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"A 10-fold cross-validation is applied to avoid overfitting: the sample is randomly divided into 10 equal-sized subsets; 9 subsets are used to train the model (step 1), which is then applied to the remaining subset to predict the personality score (step 2). This procedure is repeated 10 times to predict personality for the entire sample."
Re:Uhm... (Score:5, Informative)
Haven't you failed to read the article before claiming that it is wrong?
For those playing along at home, Fig.1 from the actual article explicitly refutes the AC's claim.
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bad mod. Posting to undo. sorry
2015: Still using Facebook (Score:3, Insightful)
Disregard Facebook. Take your life back.
Re:2015: Still using Facebook (Score:5, Informative)
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But you didn't give somebody pneumonia! God is the bad guy here. Illness is God's will.
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The idea of the Christian God as evil isn't a new one, though. The Gnostics had the same idea nearly 2000 years ag
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If you accept the idea of the existence of God, then you probably accept the existence of some kind of afterlife and/or reincarnation.
I don't agree. We have drugs that can knock you out for surgery. No consciousness at all, because it shuts off parts of your brain. And yet you are suggesting that consciousness can somehow survive the obliteration of the brain, and live on in an after-life.
It seems to me that the question of an afterlife is easier to answer than the question of a creator.
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Neoconservatism, which is Italian corporatism without neutered parliament instead of show unions, is the new religion. Don't need a god to lead sheep.
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If, when you die, that's it... you are done and over with, and none of the choices you would have made will actually have any bearing on you, then you can do whatever you want, live your life as irresponsibly as you want, in full assurance that death will enable you to escape whatever consequence might otherwise be
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Dude, I have no belief in a god but I still feel an obligation to do good. Indeed, it's because I do not believe in a god that I have such a compulsion: my life is worth nothing beyond what I choose to do while I'm alive, and anybody can live for themselves, but to be worth anything requires living in pursuit of goodness.
This doesn't mean I lack respect for those people who do good through religious compulsion, however. Indeed, I have far more respect for such people than those atheists who use lack of god
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But without a god to say what is wrong or right, how do you know that what you're doing is really good? Perhaps you're doing the rankest evil, all unknowingly.
Who can say how many lives you've impacted... negatively. How many wasted lives, destroyed careers, ruined youths... all by doing what you *thought* was good.
To quote the great sage Lucy Van Pelt, "In all of mankind's history, there has never been more damage done than by people who 'thought they were doing the right thing.'" (18 Nov 1971)
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Or maybe... just maybe.... your choices in this life have an actual eternal implication. That's a heckuva lot of responsibility, and I don't blame you for preferring to disbelieve in it, because it's dramatically easier to cope with.
If you are really worrying about the afterlife because your actions could damn you for eternity, any attempts are almost certainly going to be futile. There have been so many religions in the history of mankind, most likely you will sent to a land of ice because you never slaughtered a chicken at the beginning of the summer solstice.
There is nothing cowardly about thinking your actions in this life are unlikely to help you in an afterlife. It is just common sense.
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And nobody with an iota of intelligence worries about the afterlife
The greatest minds in history excepted, of course.
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If you need fear of damnation to stop you from doing evil things, then you are a sociopath.
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That's an interesting take on it. I often thought it was somewhat the other way around. ie, it would be very comforting to think of a paternal god figure watching and guiding events. If I were less disciplined, it would be 'nice' to forget my doubts and the (seemingly logical) conclusions of the lack of existence or at least lake of interest of the divine. imho, it takes courage to accept that we are not special souls that will live through eternity.
that said, I wasn't being facetious above, i hadn't co
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Quit going to church and you will finish the task of disassociating yourself from idiots and their idiotic behavior.
If one lived alone in a cabin in the woods, one would still not succeed at escaping irrationality, since there's still one human nearby. People like to pretend that they're rational, but they're fooling themselves. You'll find the only example of non-idiotic humanity riding a unicorn, taking tea with the Flying Spaghetti Monster, in orbit about 1.3 AU out from a teapot inscribed "Bertrand" on the bottom.
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You need to hang out with a better class of Christians.
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What's the difference, data-mining wise, between having a Facebook account and willingly using your real name all over the place online? People are perfectly happy to do the latter. I don't see why those people would care about the former. (I guess there's tracking through facebook buttons all over the place, so maybe suppose that people have solid blockers for that.)
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What's the difference, data-mining wise, between having a Facebook account and willingly using your real name all over the place online?
The difference is that online, I can use my real name for things that put me in positive light. I do not post stupid things with my real name. I don't even post stupid things as AC most of the time, but that's another thing.
The difference is that with FB, they map ALL your associations, not just what you poast on there.
Re:2015: Still using Facebook (Score:4, Insightful)
Why are people still using Facebook? Because other people are, and they use it as their medium to schedule events and coordinate activities.
90% of my Facebook activity is devoted to participation in a handful of secret/private groups, and the other 10% is responding to event invites -- some of which are "go, no-go," others are FCFS based on responses to the invites.
Also, I mostly DNGAF about Facebook (or Google, or whomever) knowing what flavor potato chip I prefer because I used my club card at the store. Google gave me $15.98 on their Opinion Rewards platform for knowing even MORE about me. Whee!
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Once it became necessary to manage your facebook profile so that you would appear like what you needed to appear like, facebook became pretty much worthless. Only foolish people don't carefully manage their profile, only foolish people actually use it for personal interaction because not only are you giving your privacy away but you are also giving away the privacy of everyone else you communicate with via that medium. Reality is you might as well call facebook - liebook because that is what it more accura
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Re: 2015: Still using Facebook (Score:1)
When the strangers are deciding about health insurance, car insurance, job prospects/promotions, and a whole lot of other things then heck yes I care. If they do that based on my fb associations or any private data, it sure is something I would care about.
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So you're willing to sell off your privacy for a few bucks?
Not under those terms, which is why I don't use store-specific cards (since it's already bad enough that credit processors want to track me). If there were a pay service that could replace FB in all aspects, minus ads and data-gathering, I'd be more than interested to look at it.
How does it feel knowing that there are complete strangers out there that think they know you because of the data they collect on you about purchasing habits?
Honestly? It doesn't bother me. Similar to "How does it feel [...] that think they know you because of your pseudonynmous posts on Slashdot?" I don't do anything important on Facebook, similar to how I don't do anything important on
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where I have the most friends...and have no real connection to that town anymore.
Right.
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So you're willing to sell off your privacy for a few bucks?
Parts of it, sure.
That's what you're doing if you didn't realize it.
Of course I realize what I'm giving up.
Same goes for any 'rewards club' type cards at retailers: You're giving them permission to gather personally identifiable data on you, for a few measly bucks. How does it feel knowing that there are complete strangers out there that think they know you because of the data they collect on you about purchasing habits?
It feels great sving money in exchange for something I place little value on. I DNFAG that Safeway knows I prefer Coke over Pepsi and that I buy the name-brand cheese that's on sale. I DNFAG that Facebook and Google buy this information and pair it with my driving habits and use it to try to feed me ads or sell it to other advertisers.
How will you feel about it when someone gets it wrong?
I won't care, no matter how outraged YOU get over it.
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Charging at-risk people more for health insurance (myself included) doesn't sound outrageous at all. If I post to Facebook regularly about how I like to smoke cigarettes, my insurer should charge me the smoker rate.
I find this no different than car insurance companies who'll let you connect an ODB2/GPS device to your car in exchange for better rates if you drive slower, accelerate slower, brake smoother, etc.
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Why? Why, with everything that everyone knows about Facebook, all the privacy violations, all the obvious signs that they really don't give a rat's ass about the users, just the money that users' data can earn them, would anyone still be using Facebook?
Because social networking is > than what which preceded it and Facebook has a critical mass of users that makes the alternatives (G+) pale in comparison? I have friends on five different continents. Is there an easier way to remain in contact with them? To stay abreast of the developments in their lives and to keep them current on mine? Additionally, I have friends in countries where texting isn't included in their base phone plans, so they all invariably use FB Messenger for communications that Amer
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I'm no more "forced" to use Facebook than I am "forced" to have a cell phone. I could get by with just a landline or even no phone. It would just be massively inconvenient. It's the same with Facebook. Yes I could live without it. I choose not to. You're welcome to decide differently if you wish.
Re:2015: Still using Facebook (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't matter if you use Facebook or not - they can already infer that TV shows and musicians exist via user data and automatically construct pages for them - WKRP In Cincinnati is a good example or was when I looked at it last summer. If they can infer media exists then it stands to reason that they can infer that you exist. Imagine that, if you will - a near future in which you have a fairly accurate social media profile rather you want one or not.
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Near future? Ever since they convinced your "friends" to let them mine their phones for numbers, they figured out your social links, and developed fairly accurate profiles of you like 5+ years ago.
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Google "Facebook shadow profile". The near future already exists.
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Well, maybe because I have pictures from a trip that I want my friends (real friends) to see, and the easiest way is to post them on Facebook? It's like Willy Sutton's answer when they asked him why he robbed banks: "that's where the money is".
All in the definitions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:All in the definitions (Score:4, Informative)
It is not explicit, but it is clear that they did not use Facebook friends, preferring real ones instead.
Reddit ? (Score:3)
I hope nobody will ever be able to use my reddit's comments to predicts my personnality ever!!!
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The names of the factors are guesses. Factor analysis looks at the covariance matrix of items, and finds sub-matrices of the total matrix that meaningfully covary. Each one of those sub-matrices is called a factor, or latent variable, which is measured by common covariation between the questions. The number of latent factors found in a questionnaire is typically derived both by theory (we made a questionnaire intended to measure these 6 different things) and empirical facts (of which typically would be Horn
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Except that the Big Five aren't orthogonal, which means they are fairly useless as a personality theory.
Nothing is going to be explicitly orthogonal, and forcing them to be doesn't make the conceptual issue you seem to have any better or worse (n.b., orthogonal connotes a lack of meaningful correlation between the factors. What the parent is complaining about is that each of the latent factors is meaningfully correlated with the other four to different extents). First, we are of course talking about an exploratory (EFA) approach (haven't read the article but the 10-fold CV referenced above makes sense), and p
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You should really sign in when posting something so informative (although some citations would be really nice). That way you can get good karma to give your posts an automatic +1 or +2 and it's easier to track when people reply.
fair point. I lost my old account a good six years ago and never created a new one.
Yeah sure (Score:1)
If that were true I'd be a gay gerbil with diabetes, a heart condition, and wanting to date 20 yo girls.
None are true.
Now, 26 ...
Targeted Advertising is About Targeting You (Score:1)
The thing to know about all these "big data" targeted advertising systems is that they are not about finding stuff you might want to buy. They are about figuring out how best to press your buttons to manipulate you into buying whatever their customers have paid them to push on you. They don't care what kind of beer you like, they just care what kind of girls you like so that they can show you the beer commercial with the kinds of girls most likely to make you got out and buy a beer.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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Its a bit like the people who use cryptography or have an interest privacy services?
People Lacking Facebook Accounts Viewed As Suspicious (August 8, 2012)
http://www.dailytech.com/Peopl... [dailytech.com]
Beware, Tech Abandoners. People Without Facebook Accounts Are 'Suspicious.' (8/06/2012)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ka... [forbes.com]
It really depends on who is doing the tracking and the number of hops to friends and shared likes?
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And you think the rest of the websites are saints when they install trackers like addthis.com scripts that can uniquely identify and track you without cookies? There is no openness about who they sell your info about your activity on their website. www == spyware
Personality is multifaceted (Score:2)
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I saw an ad at the station for some company doing personality tests to 'unlock your potential'. That reminded me that I did a bunch of these at the start of my teens at school, primarily as a means to determine the sorts of jobs you might want to look into. I answered those tests in good faith, I wasn't trying to game them, and yet, without exception, they came out as "inconclusive", with no career suggestions at all (I wonder if they refund the test fee for that!?). I sure hope they've improved since then,
Glad I'm not on facebook... (Score:3)
Every day a little gladder.
Where is the questionnaire? (Score:1)
Anyone have a link to the questionnaire? I'd like to validate my self views.
500+ question psychological tests (Score:2)
Really get to know someone, I've taken many. One a year while working in the nuclear field (a requirement).
The problem that's surfacing is it's biased towards the standard white American (ie: there is no Mexican version, even it's text is in English). This even outside of the nuclear field.
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it's biased towards the standard white American
More like the standard white American college student research subject?
No Precision? (Score:1)
Also, the system needs, to be scalable, a classifier to judge the qualities of shared posts on which likes were made. The error of this classifier would act as a multiplier to the overall accuracy of system.
They mostly explain the recall of the system, which is _slightly_ better than ra
And this surprises anyone? (Score:3)
Actually, I'm surprised that the algorithm doesn't outperform spouses as well.
Do any of your friends tirelessly catalog, index, analyze and correlate every chuckle or offhand comment you make within their earshot? Do you continue to talk freely in front of them, knowing they're doing it? If so, they can probably outperform this algorithm.
The real fun will come from correlating the physiological signals coming in from fitness bands, eye-trackers, and eventually EEG pickups. Your soul will be laid barer than lunar regolith.
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Every human being (within a range of effectiveness correlated to social intelligence) does collect and analyze every interaction they have with every other human being. We don't have the same kind of large-scale stable memory that computers do so only the results of the analysis are remembered, which is why first impressions matter so much. All of this happens in the background of our minds, rather than with some kind of conscious cataloging process. In other words, our wetware includes special architecture
PNAS? (Score:1)