Int’l Conference on Weblogs & Social Media 2008

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What Elements of an Online Social Networking Profile Predict Target-Rater Agreement in Personality?

David C. Evans Ph.D.Psychster LLC

Samuel D. Gosling Ph.DUniversity of Texas at Austin

Anthony CarrollPsychster LLC

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The Science of Interpersonal Perception

We know a lot about what people think about others’ personality, but far less about whether they are right.

If you study what one live person thinks about a fake person you get:

• Impressions. A’s thoughts about B.

• Stereotypes. Whether A thinks B is like B’s group.

• Consensus. Whether a bunch of As agree about B.

• Projection. Whether A sees B in A’s own image.

Variables you can only get if you study two live people.

• Self-Other Agreement or Impression Accuracy – Whether A sees B as B sees him or herself.

• Similarity. Whether A's and B's self-ratings are alike.

• Accuracy, Meta-accuracy, Reciprocity, Assumed Projection

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Impression Accuracy on the Web Social media (networking sites, blogs, microblogs, photo sites, job sites) have

become a central environment for interpersonal perception worldwide.

Are people getting to know each other via these media? Are they at least seeing others as the others see themselves? Under what conditions?

Flickr. Stabilo Boss.

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Impression Accuracy on the Web The present study addressed the following questions (see Funder, 1999):

• How effectively are profile owners conveying their personality to visitors?• Are some profile elements more informative than others?• Are some people better at reading personality than others?• Are some people more easily read?

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In Situ Method

We launched YouJustGetMe on the Facebook platform.

Users rated their own personalities on 21 items of the BFI-K (John, 2005) a Big-5 personality inventory.

Users formed impressions by answering the same 21 items about others via questionnaires imbedded in others’ profiles.

Upon adding the app, users also registered on YouJustGetMe.com.

4,484 impressions were collected on Facebook among participants who were 18 and older.

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In Vitro Method

We created YouJustGetMe.com a fully functional social networking website.

We only analyzed the impressions of randomly assigned targets who had profile photos.

819 impressions were collected on YouJustGetMe.com among participants who were 18 and older.

Since then 9,469 impressions have been made by 6,500 registered users .

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C’mon, give something back.

Big-5 domain scores of both the self-ratings and the guesses were displayed so users learned which traits they were right and wrong about.

Similarity and projection were also calculated and displayed.

The central DV of the study impression accuracy was calculated as the point-biserial Pearson r product-moment correlation between the self-ratings and the guesses. It was displayed to users. Fisher-z transformed rs gave the same results as the point-biserials.

Docdave saw Rachel like this

Rachel saw Rachel like this

How accurate was Docdave?

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Analysis

Do environments matter (Facebook vs. YouJustGetMe)? Does sex of rater and sex of target matter?

• Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). Unit of analysis was the dyad. DV was the impression accuracy score (Pearson r). IVs included environment (Facebook vs. YouJustGetMe), rater sex, and target sex. Covaried out age.

Which profile elements (or “clues) were associated with higher or lower impression accuracy? (YouJustGetMe only.)

• Multiple regression. Unit of analysis was the dyad. Criterion (Y) was the impression accuracy score (Pearson r). Predictors (x) were 33 binary variables indicating simply whether a particular profile element was or was not answered by the target. Dummy codes tested facial photos (head and shoulders), non-human photos (tractors, cats, anime) and other photos (groups, distant shots). Controlled for rater & targets’ age, sex, similarity & projection.

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Do environments differ? Does sex of rater and sex of target matter?

People get each other. Overall impression accuracy was significantly above zero (r = .41, SD = .21), t(6862)= 147, p < .001).

People on Facebook get each other better (r = .42) than randomly assigned strangers on YouJustGetMe (r = .29), F(1,5293) = 170.4, p < .001.

Women are better guessers than men, but only when guessing random strangers on YouJustGetMe. F(1,5293) = 12.5, p < .001.

Women are easier to get, but only when guessed by random strangers on YouJustGetMe. F(1,5293) = 12.5, p < .001,

.42 .43

.25

.33

.41.44

.24

.34

guessing

being guessed

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Which profile elements matter? Which don’t?When these clues were given on profiles, people were more understood.

beta p-value beta p-valuea link to funny video 0.096 0.000 my spirituality 0.051 0.044what makes me glad to be alive? 0.089 0.007 a great person 0.060 0.048most embarrassing thing I ever did 0.074 0.018 I believe this: 0.040 0.080proudest thing I ever did 0.057 0.063

When these clues were given on profiles, people were less understood.beta p-value beta p-value

Profile picture was a non-person -0.128 0.003 An awful person -0.065 0.028An awful website -0.079 0.003 A great book -0.066 0.037

These clues didn’t matter to personality impressions.

beta p-value beta p-valueLetters after my name 0.015 0.429 An awful book 0.040 0.115My relationship status -0.028 0.411 Delicious food -0.034 0.441My relationship saga -0.016 0.489 Terrible food 0.043 0.151My political leanings 0.007 0.725 A great website -0.027 0.310My political views -0.023 0.312 A great company 0.020 0.436A link to my other profile 0.003 0.884 An awful company 0.028 0.340A link to great art -0.005 0.845 Best time I ever had 0.017 0.563My career path 0.034 0.268 Worst time I ever had -0.014 0.672A great song 0.019 0.557 What have I been up to lately? -0.013 0.650An awful song -0.004 0.866 What drives me crazy? -0.041 0.207A great movie -0.033 0.437 Profile picture was a face/bust shot -0.016 0.595An awful movie -0.039 0.156

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Disclosure mediates gender effect.

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

picture

relationship sagaproudest thing

embarassing thing

best time

worst time

up to latelydrives me crazy

glad to be alive

political views

great art

awful personawful movie

awful website

Women (avg. 18 clues) Men (avg. 17 clues)

Women and men completed similar number of profile elements, p = .2.

Women were significantly more likely to complete profile elements that predicted higher impression accuracy, ps < .002.

Controlling for choice of profile element eliminated target gender effect, p = .3.

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Discussion – Which sources reveal which traits?

Extraversion

Agreeableness

Conscientiousness

Neuroticism

Openness

Mean

Trait

Source

.29 .22.37 .24.42 .29 .14

Web site

Face book

Bed room

Office Top-10 Music

Social beh.

Short FTF

Long term

.45

Gosling, S.D., Gaddis, S., and Vazire, S. 2007. Gosling, S.D., Ko, S.J., Mannarelli, T., and Morris, M.E. 2002. Rentfrow, P.J. & Gosling, S.D. 2006. Watson, D. 1989.

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How effectively are profile owners conveying their personality to visitors?

• Online impression accuracy (whether visitors to Facebook and YouJustGetMe profiles saw the profile owners as they saw themselves) was significantly above chance.

• People are posting information on their profiles that is consistent with their self-view of their personality, and that information is in turn consistent with the personality impression formed by visitors. This is also true of the impressions formed of strangers, which are overall less accurate that impressions of people in your network, but still above chance levels.

Are some judges better than others?• Women formed more accurate impressions of others than men, but

only when they rated random strangers. On Facebook, were people rated others in their network, this gender difference disappeared.

Are some targets more easily judged? • Impressions of women were more accurate than impressions of men,

but again, only on when they were rated by random strangers. On Facebook, were people were rated by others in their network, impressions of women and men were not significantly different.

Do certain profile elements hinder or assist the impression formation process?

• Impression agreement was significantly higher when the profile owners made statements about their spirituality, beliefs, joys, embarrassing moments, proud moments, heroes, and when they gave links to funny videos.

• Impression agreement was significantly lower when the profile owners posted pictures of non-persons, named an awful person or website, or surprisingly, named a great book.

Discussion - Specific

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Why are certain profile elements better at conveying your personality?• Items that go deeper than traits and preferences to tap issues of values and identity

seemed most revealing.

I understand why women are better at guessing. Why are they easier to guess?• Female targets were significantly more likely than male targets to disclose answers on

the profile elements that were better predictors of impression agreement such as relationship saga and proudest thing I ever did.

• However, male targets were significantly more likely to disclose their political views, great art, awful person, awful movie, and awful website.

Why were effects of rater and target gender found for the YouJustGetMe profiles and not the Facebook profiles?

• This study cannot answer that conclusively, but we can speculate. The most likely reason is we analyzed Facebook impressions of people you chose but we only analyzed the YouJustGetMe impressions of people who you were randomly assigned to which would greatly diminish the likelihood that you knew them.

• But additionally, Facebook profiles have a greater amount of information. Perhaps impression agreement had reached a ceiling for the Facebook profiles.

Discussion - General

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Don’t some people lie about themselves purposefully?

• If profile owners are lying, they are lying to themselves on the self-ratings consistently with how they are lying when constructing their profiles.

• Therefore, the majority are not purposefully creating a qualitatively different personality profile. If they are lying, it is a minority, or on other individual differences, or by incremental degrees of positive self-presentation.

• We suspect that more often, profile owners are trying to manage the views they have of themselves with the impressions they make on a diverse array of peers, such that they converge in a beneficial way.

Discussion - General

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Select References

Funder, D.C. 1999. Personality judgment: A realistic approach to person perception. Academic.

Green, R.K., Evans, D.C., & Gosling, S.D. 2008. Researching first impressions in the age of online profiles. Psi Chi, The National Honor Society in Psychology, 12, 3.

Gosling, S.D., Gaddis, S., and Vazire, S. 2007. Personality impressions based on Facebook profiles. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (Boulder, Colorado, USA, March 26 - 28, 2007).

Gosling, S.D., Ko, S.J., Mannarelli, T., and Morris, M.E. 2002. A room with a cue: Personality judgments based on offices and bedrooms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82, 3 (2002), 379-398.

John, O.P. 2005. BFI-K (Form S). Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley, Institute of Personality and Social Research.

Kenny, D.A. 1994. Interpersonal perception: A social relations analysis. Guilford Press. Rentfrow, P. J., & Gosling, S. D. 2006. Message in a Ballad: The role of music preferences in

interpersonal perception. Psychological Science, 17 (2006), 236-242. Vazire, S. and Gosling, S.D. 2004. e-Perceptions: Personality impressions based on

personal websites. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 1(2004), 123-132 Watson, D. 1989. Strangers' ratings of the five robust personality factors: Evidence for a

surprising convergence with self-report. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 1 (July, 1989), 120-128.

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