Predicting Your Personality Precisely. The Potential Of LIKES

[Asheekay]

We like things and we dislike things. What we like and dislike, defines us. This means that if someone was to learn about the things we like, they would be able so predict who we are and what personality we have.

Talk about the "like" feature of facebook. If someone was to find out the statuses, people and pages we "like" would they be able to find out who we are and what is our personality type? Researchers say Yes!

A study was carried out to see how accurately a computer algorithm could predict about the details about people based on their "likes". The researchers said they were "Completely Surprised" by the accuracy of the results.

What your Facebook 'likes' really say about you - tech - 11 March 2013 - New Scientist

Now lets talk about this forum. We also have a "like" feature here. Can we predict fellow members from their "likes" only? Lets find out in the general discussion.

[Schofield]

I think you can predict fellow members outside of the spam forum with what they 'like'. But the spam forum throws it off completely.

[Fracture]

I think you could to a degree. But unlike the Facebook 'like' function, the like function here on these forums only allows you to like statements made by other members. So basically you're just agreeing with what that person said -- liking their idea or opinion, as opposed to Facebook where you can like pages on or about practically anything, music, books, movies, people, and status written by others.

So I suppose you could say you could learn and predict people based on the like system here, but it would be no where near the level of intricacy of Facebook.

[Granyaski]

Originally Posted by Asheekay

Now lets talk about this forum. We also have a "like" feature here. Can we predict fellow members from their "likes" only? Lets find out in the general discussion.

Good luck, my 'like giving' is rare. I didn't like the change to the current system and I refused to give likes. Now I simply can't be bothered.

[Raptor_101]

Not all people "like" everything that they feel is aligned with their thinking on facebook. You can get a relatively accurate picture, but sometimes people solely like things that they are most obsessed about and others, everything that can draw similarities to what the person in question actually thinks, likes, or feels comfortable in sharing about what they feel about topics.

[Kalessin]

I wonder. I know that I don't like some things on facebook specifically because of the impression they'd give of me to some people that I don't want them to have. There are some things that I like that I'll never 'like.' The more people become connected to our accounts the less motivation there is to put anything real on there. And that increasingly seems to be the case with the younger generation migrating to a wider cross section of social media tools to interact with one another.

I'd probably never portray myself on facebook the same way I do on forums because I need some of those people and I'd be wary of potentially offending them by liking something that they don't. Especially with things that concern jobs, where your social life and work life are potentially cross-contaminating one another, the motivation seems to be to be highly risk-averse.

That said, I believe that if someone accurately and reliably reports their likes (and that's really the kicker) you can gain an incredibly precise picture of their personality. I'd expect a correlation between tests and predictions of well above 85% for a mature heuristic based on this approach cross-referencing their friends' likes as well and ordering them by how often they interact.

[Asheekay]

Originally Posted by Raptor_101

Not all people "like" everything that they feel is aligned with their thinking on facebook. You can get a relatively accurate picture, but sometimes people solely like things that they are most obsessed about and others, everything that can draw similarities to what the person in question actually thinks, likes, or feels comfortable in sharing about what they feel about topics.

Thats true.

So you mean it depends on the person and the situation?

Originally Posted by Kalessin

I wonder. I know that I don't like some things on facebook specifically because of the impression they'd give of me to some people that I don't want them to have. There are some things that I like that I'll never 'like.' The more people become connected to our accounts the less motivation there is to put anything real on there. And
that increasingly seems to be the case with the younger
generation migrating to a
wider cross section of social
media tools to interact with
one another.

Thats precisely why a whole group of people feel exposed with the advancements in technology. The more the communication technologies are advancing, the more is an individual's privacy compromised.

But then again, the more the corporations know about us, the better they can serve us. So its a trade off of sorts.

[Fracture]

Originally Posted by Granyaski

I didn't like the change to the current system and I refused to give likes. Now I simply can't be bothered.

I was of that opinion at the beginning. Then I decided not to give a f*ck, and give likes instead!

[Kalessin]

Originally Posted by Asheekay

Thats precisely why a whole group of people feel exposed with the advancements in technology. The more the communication technologies are advancing, the more is an individual's privacy compromised.

But then again, the more the corporations know about us, the better they can serve us. So its a trade off of sorts.

Maybe. It seems to me that often people expose themselves. Communications tech seems to have relatively to do with it beyond being a component of change.

Take Facebook for example: People are trading some of their privacy for the ability to publish to their friends, and as communications tech is advancing they're spreading their risk profile across different services. They're becoming better at managing quite what they show and share.

It's just something that people are learning to deal with. I remember when I was little, constantly being told "don't use your real name on the internet". And there were people at the time saying how dangerous it was to let your daughter go on the internet, that they wouldn't be able to deal with the privacy issues properly. Same sort of thing with Facebook and the like I think.

I think it's the things people do that they don't quite understand that end up with their privacy being violated. Where the infrastructure of how they share changes and they become confused as to quite what constitutes their private sphere and their public sphere. But I don't think invasions of privacy are specifically tied to advances in communications technology. There's nothing forcing you to like anything on facebook or post your picture on there or anything like that.

[Asheekay]

Thats right. Of course there is no coercion upon this matter. But when a gun is hanging off a wall, you can be sure it will be fired one day, whenever that day comes.

Lets see. You say you don't use the like feature of facebook for the reason that it makes your real self known to the people connected to your life or that it gives a certain impression to them about you which you would like to avoid. Don't the people connected to your real life already know you more than the strangers know? I would expect them to know quite a few things about you. If your friends have learned nothing intimate about you in 20/30 years, I think you are a slightly paranoid person.

I think the problem of privacy is not our facebook friends learning about us (facebook was made for people to share more information quicker with their friends) but our data being available to the people we don't want it to.

When we post something or "like" something, it is mostly not only available to our friends and facebook staff but probably also sold to several advertisement firms (we get "recommended stories" for a reason). That is bad, but not the worst. The worst part is, when a stranger searches us on facebook and finds bits and pieces of information there. Despite the privacy filters and whatnot, some of the profile data does leak away for one reason or the other. It is when the strangers learn about us, that creates the problem, not our friends and family