A video of a puppy having a bath. A photograph of a Monster Munch sandwich. Neighbours; a friend’s spare room for rent; a colleague’s travel updates. This motley list makes up the things I have “liked” on Facebook in the past few days.
Clicking the blue thumbs-up beside a post on the social network is something many of us do without a second thought. Sometimes it’s because we genuinely like it. Sometimes it’s a shortcut to saying hello to an old acquaintance.
Sometimes it’s simply something to do. It’s an absent-minded act, as transient and inconsequential as the changing stories in our newsfeed.
Or is it? For it has been revealed that as we while away our lives browsing Facebook on our mobile phones and tablets, Facebook is watching us back.
There have been recent rumblings that the social network is more than the benign data dump it appears – last month, it used an algorithm to collate users’ most popular photographs of 2014 into a cheery collage, and offended some by posting pictures of relatives who had died.
Earlier last year, too, it caused outrage by allowing researchers to tweak newsfeeds for a sociological experiment.
But the latest development goes further still. Scientists from the Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge have found, in a study of 86000 Facebook profiles, an individual’s character can be predicted based on their “likes”.
Personalities are measured by the traits used in psychological assessments – openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism – and the results forecast users’ likely sexual orientation, political and religious views, life satisfaction and intelligence.
“Given so much of our lives is lived through digital devices, all of them collecting information about you, it’s a great opportunity for researchers to look at large numbers of people in more detail than ever before,” explains Dr David Stillwell, co-author of the prediction software, entitled Apply Magic Sauce.
“Some things about it are interesting and some are a little scary, in terms of what computers are capable of.”
Anyone can take the free test, but reactions have been mixed. “It was fun to do,” says one friend who let the software access her profile.
“But it says I’m nearly seven years younger than I am and that I’m single and 7% probability of being a lesbian. I’m in a three-year relationship with a guy, so that’s not quite right either.”
In research, the test was able to predict personality traits based on just 10 “likes”.
A preference for Doctor Who and the game Minecraft, for example, indicates a shy and more reserved personality; liking gothic rock and Buffy the Vampire Slayer suggests possible emotional instability; while a fondness for tanning and meeting new people implies extroversion.
Accuracy improves as the “likes” increase (the average Facebook profile has 227).
So should you take the Facebook test? It’s a bit of harmless fun, and should be understood as such.
“But be careful,” warns Nathalie Nahaia, a web psychologist and author of Webs of Influence. “Something as throwaway as a ‘like’ can give away rich personal information that you can’t get back once it’s in the public domain.”
To take the test, log in to Facebook, open a new tab and search for applymagicsauce.com/test. Then click on “Predict my Profile”. — The Daily Telegraph
Facebook knows you better than you do
Clicking the blue thumbs-up beside a post on the social network is something many of us do without a second thought. Sometimes it’s because we genuinely like it. Sometimes it’s a shortcut to saying hello to an old acquaintance.
Sometimes it’s simply something to do. It’s an absent-minded act, as transient and inconsequential as the changing stories in our newsfeed.
Or is it? For it has been revealed that as we while away our lives browsing Facebook on our mobile phones and tablets, Facebook is watching us back.
There have been recent rumblings that the social network is more than the benign data dump it appears – last month, it used an algorithm to collate users’ most popular photographs of 2014 into a cheery collage, and offended some by posting pictures of relatives who had died.
Earlier last year, too, it caused outrage by allowing researchers to tweak newsfeeds for a sociological experiment.
But the latest development goes further still. Scientists from the Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge have found, in a study of 86000 Facebook profiles, an individual’s character can be predicted based on their “likes”.
Personalities are measured by the traits used in psychological assessments – openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism – and the results forecast users’ likely sexual orientation, political and religious views, life satisfaction and intelligence.
“Given so much of our lives is lived through digital devices, all of them collecting information about you, it’s a great opportunity for researchers to look at large numbers of people in more detail than ever before,” explains Dr David Stillwell, co-author of the prediction software, entitled Apply Magic Sauce.
“Some things about it are interesting and some are a little scary, in terms of what computers are capable of.”
Anyone can take the free test, but reactions have been mixed. “It was fun to do,” says one friend who let the software access her profile.
“But it says I’m nearly seven years younger than I am and that I’m single and 7% probability of being a lesbian. I’m in a three-year relationship with a guy, so that’s not quite right either.”
In research, the test was able to predict personality traits based on just 10 “likes”.
A preference for Doctor Who and the game Minecraft, for example, indicates a shy and more reserved personality; liking gothic rock and Buffy the Vampire Slayer suggests possible emotional instability; while a fondness for tanning and meeting new people implies extroversion.
Accuracy improves as the “likes” increase (the average Facebook profile has 227).
So should you take the Facebook test? It’s a bit of harmless fun, and should be understood as such.
“But be careful,” warns Nathalie Nahaia, a web psychologist and author of Webs of Influence. “Something as throwaway as a ‘like’ can give away rich personal information that you can’t get back once it’s in the public domain.”
To take the test, log in to Facebook, open a new tab and search for applymagicsauce.com/test. Then click on “Predict my Profile”. — The Daily Telegraph
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