Your Online Profile Actually Tells a Lot About You

An anonymous reader writes "Despite all the media reports that your Facebook profile is giving the wrong impression, a psychological study shows people really can understand your personality from your online profile. Turns out you're not giving the wrong impression with your profile; you're giving the right impression to the wrong people. You can actually learn more about someone's Agreeableness from their online profile than from a first date."

Comments

Of course this assumes that when you filled it out

[RLiegh]

you were being completely honest. I know that I certainly would never think to put a fake age, fake name or fake job when I fill out a profile online. ...nosireebub.

Re:Of course this assumes that when you filled it

[Perseid]

It also assumes that you put a decent amount of effort into it. What does a sparse profile say about me? That I'm lazy? That I don't really care about MySpace? Who knows?

Just another case of...

[eharvill]

People post too much crap about themselves online. Facebook has some decent "security" features about whom can see their profiles, but people tend leave the option checked "anyone in my network" can see my profile without realizing the ramifications. Anyway, yeah, does the FA really surprise anyone???

Re:Of course this assumes that when you filled it

[story645]

The fake answers are just as interesting in some ways. When I see a fave album list that looks too carefully constructed (that perfect mix of obscure and popular, with those two horrible but the entire planet loves songs) that tells me as much about the person as an honest list would.

Re:I agree

[owlnation]

It says you're the kind of person that has a Facebook profile.

and thereby, most surely, are a target market.

Re:Of course this assumes that when you filled it

[Narpak]

Or maybe that you actually cared about your security and the concept of identity theft. Or maybe you just prefer meeting gurls in real life, as opposed to some vague flirtation online that could easily have been with someone lying about their details.

Or maybe you are just way to busy spamming slashdot and raiding Sunwell (or whining on the AoC forums) to care about some stupid MySpace/Facebook page.

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

I tend to think their vocal chords are connected neurally to the parts of their brain that think whereas men can think without their vocal chords moving.

I tend to think that men use their vocal chords as a secondary tactic after "Hulk Smash!" Women are physically smaller, so they can't generally get their way through force. Women have to manage with what they have: negotiation. If women simply point out mens' failings, men start pounding their chests to demonstrate their dominance. Who needs a brain or tact when might makes right? Case in point... Behold: pedantic dweebs berating what is probably the only woman on /. for failing to use the — code to produce a — symbol. Thanks to their quick actions, the female is quieted and they can resume wanking it and flaming each other to assert their dominance on the internet's biggest sausage party.

Re:Talking without communicating??

[TaoPhoenix]

Communication operates at many levels.

You may agree that the specific subject is a subject of "low importance". However, what they are engaging in is building the conext of communication, which is a signal "I am here for you, sharing my time with a Null topic, and I am available if you have something more difficult to discuss."

Men often use the heuristic that such material "worsens the noise-signal ratio". At the extremes, you get taciturn men whose entire speech for the day is "Your wall's burning."

Of Chickens and Men

[Fantastic Lad]

All chickens are taken to slaughter, but they still have to spend their chicken-energy.

Facebook is a great big behavioral data collection engine which is perfectly suited for the monitoring and control of millions. Is it used this way? I don't know. I suspect there is far more data gleaned from our collective lifetimes spent traveling through the education and medical systems, and in adulthood, through the banking systems, than is collected from facebook. --And those other systems are either run directly by the government or are tightly intertwined with government, whereas Facebook is still somewhat private. Though I can certainly see how something like Facebook sheds light into areas which those previously mentioned systems have a harder time quantifying, namely your associations with other people. (Though, that kind of thing is not invisible; there are phone records and email records; Facebook just kind of collects it all with a nice GUI for the MIB's.)

However. . , it's still a system which binds friends and communities together. Much like the phone system. --You're not going to stop using the phone to call your parents or friends just because you KNOW the government is recording everything in paranoid anxiety.

Yeah, humans are hopelessly manipulable, perfect candidates for conquest, domination and liquidation on a whim. Be we still have to fall in love and make friends and exchange ideas. Even this post right now is easily traceable to yours truly, I have no doubt whatsoever. But am I going to stop living because there are monsters in our midst? Hmm. Nope. It's sort of a race to the finish line using the same track; we can share information and build strong ties as a community which can prepare and help prevent attack, and while we do this, the enemy learns all the clever ways it can attack by secretly watching as we form our communities. Who will win?

Not sure what the answer is, but the people I've seen who spend their days clinging to anger at the unfairness of it all tend to make themselves sick and miserable and don't generally DO anything productive with their knowledge. There are other ways, and communication is a vital part of it. And so is awareness. Knowing that Facebook makes you naked is important. What you choose to do after that is up to you.

-FL

Generalize much? :P

[Moraelin]

Women have to manage with what they have: negotiation. Women have to manage with what they have: negotiation. If women simply point out mens' failings, men start pounding their chests to demonstrate their dominance.

"Negotiation" is one way to put it. In practice, you get a whole gamut ranging from outright submissive, to (rarely) threats of violence. I know at least one who's pretty proud that her negotiations with her late husband were along the lines of "you do thing my way, and I won't bash your head in." With various shades in between, that include:

- nagging. Literally pointing those perceived failings out again and again and again, until hopefully you get the idea that chest thumping doesn't work anyway.

- manipulation.

- indirect threats and manipulation. There are a couple of whole cultures where a woman's only power was gained by, for example, manipulating her sons against their father. Or I only have to look at my own deranged family, where grandma manipulated mom and dad against each other, and my mom tried more than once to manipulate me and my brother against each other. (Thankfully though, she's such a socially inept nerd, that it was just funny to see her try.)

- annoying passive aggression

- basically, "if you don't do as I say, you're getting no sex"

Etc, etc, etc.

Basically, _some_ women are nice, and _some_ are nasty in various ways. Sociopathy/Psychopathy exists in women too, not only in men, for example. Four times fewer, yes, but that's far from zero.

Note that I'm not especially vilifying women here. I'm just saying that there's a whole range of them, ranging from saint to Antichrist, so to speak. From Mother Theresa to such fine gals as Johanna Langefeld, Maria Mandl, and Elisabeth Volkenrath, who led the women's camp at Auschwitz. IIRC Maria Mandl alone ordered the death of _half_ _a_ _million_ women. She was known as "The Beast" and also known to have people killed for as little as looking at her. Or Ilse Koch, The Witch of Buchenwald. Now that's a sadistic gal.

In other words, cute, but as false as all blanket generalizations.

Who needs a brain or tact when might makes right? Case in point... Behold: pedantic dweebs berating what is probably the only woman on /. for failing to use the — code to produce a -- symbol. Thanks to their quick actions, the female is quieted and they can resume wanking it and flaming each other to assert their dominance on the internet's biggest sausage party.

Again, spare me the blanket generalizations, please.

The grammar/spelling/punctuation trolls are a rather tiny group of trolls. Annoying and visible, yes, but in no way representative for a whole gender.

So, anyway, you found one message from one of those retards. And he was answering to a woman. Whop-de-do. They do that to anyone, and to each other.

How's that representative for males as a whole?

In fact, I'll go on a limb and say that most people on Slashdot, male or female, look down upon that group of retards. Most of us aim upwards, not find some "look, someone typoed a 5 letter words that I knew!" claims to glory. It's only when you're near the bottom of the proverbial barrel, that "look, there's someone (arguably) lower than me!!" starts looking like some claim to glory. Some people just are that low, have no achievements worth bragging about, and are building their sole claim to glory out of such "OMG, you typoed a 5 letter word that I know how to spell! You must be more stupid than me!!!" lameness. It's not even pedantry, it's being a worthless loser and knowing it. Nothing more.