There is a lot more to read on Facebook, Twitter, etc from people
than messages. And I enjoy reading them. I am not alone. Psychologists,
employers and security operatives get to know a lot more about you from
your display or profile pictures, and pictures you post than you think.
“A very important aspect of measuring personality through social
media is that it’s unobtrusive. You’re directly observing people’s
behaviour rather than asking them to report on it,” says Daniel
Preotiuc-Pietro at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, whose
team presented their research this year at the International Conference
on Web and Social Media in Cologne, Germany.
You perhaps didn’t need research findings to know that. You of course
know some of your Facebook friends enough to know women who are not
truly beautiful but display carefully-taken shots in which they look
pretty; those who are searching; those who may be looking beyond their
marital homes; those who pretend they have peaceful homes, when there
are indeed ‘married singles’, and of course extroverts and introverts,
among others.
Interesting these days are people who go about venting anger on
others, especially those in authority. Anger is often caused by
frustration. If you are able to dig into the background of such people,
you would understand them.
Before the results of the latest study, let’s see an interesting profiling done on mylife.com and others.
Duckface: Usually a girl, pressing her lips together
and pouting them, resembling a duck. It suggests you like attention and
want to look cute and sexy. The puckering of the lips accentuates the
cheekbones making you look thin and eradicating the double chin. It’s
also intended as an ‘I’m so fun and cute’ pose.
The Couple Shot: A picture of you and your supposed
lover positioned very close to each other, probably kissing the cheek.
It shows you love each other and you want the world to know. But if you
are truly in love, is that where to show it?
The Crop-out: A group photo but you have cropped
others out to show yourself, and small bits of body parts of others in
the corners of the picture. Suggests you don’t like the other people in
the picture or you think you look better than them, but you have ended
up telling the world that they look better than you.
The Throwback: An old childhood picture of you.
Well, you are telling the world you have a strong appreciation for the
past, and you daydream about the ‘good old days’. Bottomline, you are a
boring person.
Party Picture: A party shot of you and your friends
holding drinks and looking like you are having a time of your life. It
means you believe in living live to the fullest, and you are unlikely to
take things too seriously. Employers take note?
The Head Shot: A high-angle picture, looking out into the distance with a somber look. Means you have teenage angst and hate the world now.
The narcissists: A study shows that people
habitually posting to Facebook about exercise, diets and accomplishments
are more likely to be narcissists.
Low self-esteem: The study also found that people
who post updates about their current romantic partners are more likely
to have low self-esteem.
Latest research: This 2016 study reveals that social
media profile pictures can reveal clues about personality. A team of
researchers from the University of Pennsylvania used character
assessment software to analyse the profile pictures of 66,000 Twitter
users, as well as asking a further 434 people to fill in a psychological
survey.
Here is how to spot each of the five aspects of personality:
Open to experiences: This category of profile
picture-takers are those who enjoy tackling new, exciting experiences
and aren’t afraid to pose in a kooky or odd way. Most likely to pose
with an object, be it a guitar or a snowboard or a bonsai tree, those
who fall into this group take the best pictures.
Glasses are a common feature of these profile pictures, and the face often appears large within the frame.
However, despite showing off skills in their profile pictures, people in this category are the most likely to take insipid, colourless photos, and look angry or sad in them.
Neurotic: They are users who have trouble holding
back their negative emotions. As a result, those in this category are
the most likely to eschew convention and set an image of something other
than their face as a profile picture – be it a car, a building or a
pet.
Those neurotics who do take the plunge and post a picture of their
own face will likely look bland and neutral in the resulting image.
According to the study authors, they would rather look miserable, but
feel like the “strong social norm against a very sad or angry appearance
in profile pictures” precludes them from doing so.
Conscientious: Conscientious social media users are
more likely to appear older than their years in profile pictures, and
will use techniques such as wearing glasses or smarter clothes to
achieve this. They are those who enjoy “orderliness, planned behaviour
and self-discipline” fit into this category. These traits are
represented in their profile pictures through positive emotion probably
because the shots will always be perfected framed and not one hair will
be out of place.
Agreeable: As the name suggests, these users are the most likely to be cheerful, get along with others and smile. The profile pictures of agreeable people are one of the most likely
to be colourful (along with extroverts) – and will feature the subject
laughing, playing with others or smiling broadly.
The image itself will likely be poor quality, badly framed and with a low, blurry resolution – but this group is simply having too much fun to spend time focusing the camera.
The image itself will likely be poor quality, badly framed and with a low, blurry resolution – but this group is simply having too much fun to spend time focusing the camera.
Extrovert: The show-offs. Extroverts, although smiling and gloating in their snaps, take the worst quality pictures, however.
“Extroverts’ images do not have any correlation with the colour
attributes that make a photo aesthetically pleasing (contrast,
saturation, lack of blur),” reads the study.
These people also tend to pose with young people, or adopt other techniques to make themselves appear younger than they are.
The very accurate perception
This is the bad news for job seekers and employees. Experts say that although profile picture analysis may not be a suitable replacement of other methods, combining it with other forms of analysis of social media data such as the text in tweets and status updates, or a record of things that a person has liked, might give “a very accurate perception” of what someone is like.
Last January, for example, a machine learning
algorithm learned to predict personality traits from Facebook likes.
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PLEASE BE POLITE