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Inferring Personality From Email Addresses
paleshadows writes "Three researchers from the University of Leipzig published an interesting paper titled 'How extroverted is honey.bunny77@hotmail.de? Inferring personality from e-mail addresses' (PDF). From the abstract: 'Email addresses represent the thinnest slice of information that people receive from one another. Using 599 e-mail addresses of young adults, their self-reported personality scores and the personality judgments of 100 independent observers, it was shown that personality impressions based solely on e-mail addresses were consensually shared by observers. Moreover, these impressions contained some degree of validity. This was true for neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and narcissism but not for extroversion."'
Next: scientists discover that how you look and act reflects on your personality, too.
I don't know, but I have a suspicion that he/she doesn't have much of a sense on humour.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
...you must add the .pdf extension.
honey.bunny spam name
What does the address chunkylover53@aol.com tell you?
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
Okay my email starts with zizban@...so what does that say about me?
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
So the article summary starts with:
How extraverted is honey.bunny77@hotmail.de? Inferring personality from e-mail addresses
And ends with:
Moreover, these impressions contained some degree of validity....but not for extraversion
So the only example in the summary is wrong. And you can tell by reading the summary. Bravo.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
I mean, consider an address like "leatherdude@hotmale.com", "bottom4lrgck@gmail.com", or "cowboyneal@slashdot.org" It's fairly safe to assume they're into the gay scene.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Is it weird that I don't really like having my email addresses tell other people much about me other than the basics, like my name and unfortunately I'll throw in the YOB just because it's a number I won't forget...
One of my email addresses starts with 'None_Yobidness@....'. That fits my personality; when someone asks for my email address, I can truthfully say that it's None Yobidness!
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
If a girl has the word "sexy" as part of her email address, don't fall in love with her. No matter how hot she is, no matter how freaky she is.
Just don't. :(
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
Personality tests are (reasonably) based around extroversion in normal social interactions. I think its fairly well accepted that one's introversion/extroversion on the Internet is not necessarily the same as in "meat space". Perhaps "honey bunny" is shy in real life but using the freedom and anonymity of the web to act as she would like to be able to act in real life without consequences. The reserved accountant in real life could be the brash bon vivant at their computer.
Granted, a similar variation would be likely for other attributes, but I would be surprised if extroversion was the trait most likely to have a radical change (increase).
it was shown that personality impressions based solely on e-mail addresses were consensually shared by observers.
... So someone paid one hundred observers and who knows how many research administrators to find out that if a group of people look at the same word(s), they will have a similar reaction? Strange, I thought that was the primary purpose of language. Silly me...
Moreover, these impressions contained some degree of validity.
And this says absolutely nothing. At all. "Some degree of validity" includes such conditions as "My father's, brother's, nephew's, cousin's, former roommate felt that way".
http://www.allen-poole.com/
"Knob Gobbling" has a COMPLETELY different meaning in New Zealand, people!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This is part of the reason why many courts world wide regard email as privileged. Not just because it may contain communications between a person and their attorney or priest or doctor; email can reveal private information that only the person should be allowed to disclose. Of course, once someone sends an email to another, they no longer have an expectation of privacy with that individual. However, I should not have the right to read your private email without your consent. Work email is another matter. Work email is often the property of the company, and can often be read without notifying the account user. Of course, your local laws may vary on this point.
You clearly have far too much spare time & not enough to do.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
...one question comes to mind: Is psychology really a science?
So, if somebody's address is 'metalhead@domain', it's safe to assume that he likes Iron Maiden -- or has a plate in his skull?
I write sci-fi for metalheads
One of my favorites, though, is the story of a guy applying for a job at Yahoo! He registered the email account "iwanttowork(@yahoo.com)," and used that to send his resume. They hired him.
I wish I could find my source for that, but I'm damn sure it happened.
SIG: HUP
But the first thing I thought when I saw "honey.bunny77@hotmail.de" was that it was a spam address.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
It stopped being science when Stanley Milgram died.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Then again, I have this suspicion that being one of the early guys at /., he's crying all the way to the bank: he's getting the last laugh.
Maybe i have been online to much but i have always profiled email addresses and screen names. and to determine everything from age to race. It always is a good indicator that lets me know what to expect.
here are some fun examples... african-americans tend to type the addresses in all caps.
Younger people tend to show there age at the time the create their in the address and older people usually put their year of birth in the address.
artists might use European spellings in there words in the address.
There are alot of things you can use to determine who your emails are coming from, i just wish i could have gotten some of that funding instead of actually having to work.
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
A friend of mine and I were looking for a 3rd room mate to share the costs with. We previously had a female friend of ours and we got along just fine (she got married and moved out) so we figured male or female was okay, so long as the personalities matched-up. So he put an ad online.
One of the responses was from a girl who said she was fun and easy to get along with and had no problem rooming with guys. My friend was about to call her, but I noticed that her email address was some sort of obfuscated leet-speak, and after staring at it for a moment I realized it was her bra size + some other personality attributes. I decifered it and did a google search only to find some prom pictures that would make a porn star blush. We decided to keep searching. (Yes, many readers will call me crazy for that. Choose your roommates carefully guys.)
Lesson learned: email addresses can say a lot about someone.
that if you have multiple email addresses you have multiple personalities?
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
With my new email I probably score good in both openness and narcissism!
@neonux
I chose my screenname/email address when I was in 4th grade. I'm now a Junior in college. So the only thing you can infer from my email address is about my personality ~10 years ago.
at least you get to have a cup of tea with someone and chat before you "read the leaves".
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Am I the only one who doesn't open email from a sender I don't know? If I know someone, hasn't the initial impression already been set?
In other news... A 64 year old may using the email address honey.bunny77@hotmail.de has been arrested for multiple counts of pedophilia - More at 11
"Does this wine taste funny to you?" -- Socrates
If his/her address is s.ballmer@microsoft.com, they might be short-tempered.
By that logic, roger@rogertheshrubber.net is some sort of arranger, designer, and seller of shrubberies.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
.
1. Other people besides me started using the Internet, and no matter how obscure a cartoon character was, somebody already took it. Also, Japanese cartoons and comic books became more popular, so formerly obscure characters I'd use suddenly became well know.
2. People would get annoyed at my weird Email addresses, "So, you're JustyUekiTylor@xyz.com . How do you spell that?"
3. It was too much information about me to be giving out, and of course, I'd end up giving these Email addresses to employers and potential employers (fortunately it was the dot.com boom, so I got hired anyway).
Nowadays, my Email address are (first intial)_(middle initial)_(last name)_(random number)@xyz.com , I can give them out to anyone, business or personal, and they don't tell anything about me except a little bit about my ethnic ancestry. I also have a few old cartoon character Email addresses hanging around, which I use for dubious Websites that I want to be (semi)anonymous on.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
come get your emailadresses here!
"My email is notsobright@spamheaven.com, what does that say about me?"
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
I mean seriously...at least 76 other people have honey.bunny!
Think up something new!
about me?
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
n/t
you had me at #!
"Scientists" have discovered that 9/10 people can deduce the personality of people by the studies they are conducting.
"People judge me as having a God complex," Dr C. Heesenfeed commented, "mostly because I have mice running through mazes all day. But my studies have proven that 87% of all mice will go for a delicous piece of Emmental rather than for Brie. Cheese produces claimed that I was biased towards the rich and full flavour of the delicious Emmental, as opposed to plain old Brie. My friends avoid me these days because I always play with mice."
But statistical analysis has indeed shown that most people judge scientists by their statistical studies. 50% of people find most studies frivolous or useless, 30% found them to be an utter waste of time, while only 20% responded they liked to read about pointless statistics in the newspaper.
"People tell me that sometimes I'm really out there,", spoke Dr W. Ellhung, "especially when I tell them about my studies into the mating behavior in humans and finding a link between what food people eat. It's not really out there, because I've found sufficient evidence that eating very large amounts of chili on a regular interval decreases your chances of scoring... I mean, decreases the attraction coefficient."
According to an anonymous source "Statistics don't always have to be meaningless. When interpreted correctly they can be very useful, for example, I am currently trying to predict next week lottery numbers by calculating the chance that a certain number will be picked using collected data from over 25 years. When I'm a millionaire, no one will be laughing with me anymore. I'll show them, or my name isn't Pjotr Orb'stard". He was then seen running towards the exit while laughing diabolically before impacting against the automatic door. "What are the odds of that happening to me???" he yelled.
What are the odds indeed
They tested for normal extroversion. However, extroversion on the Internet - where the email name is most relevant - and extroversion in real space is not necessarily the same.
and ask.
you had me at #!
tomorrow on /. we look at what your mobile phone number says about your future!
pathetic.
I don't care if you have the address honey.bunny77@hotmail.de, just stop applying for jobs with it.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Mine begins ciscogod@ ....
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
...are necessary. I once received a CV from "slap_head_dave@..." He didn't even get an interview.
That sort of jocular email address is fine for your friends' use but you need to use a serious one for business / applying for jobs etc. or else nobody will take you seriously at all.
One of the things i hated about Sherlock Holmes novels were their "deductions" based on small hints. From a scratched clock he deducted (turned up that "correctly", oh, author power) all a family story, while could have been a lot of ways to get the same result.
With emails could be the same. Being into the highly creative and imaginative sector of the population that uses his name as base for the email address, cant stop thinking in names that could lead to wrong conclusions with this methodology (or at least, where you dont know if the address is because matches name or some weird personality).
And the same could apply to other ways to choose email addresses. But i agree that for some this kind of study can be a mostly safe bet
as my email address. That way, anyone can learn anything they want to know about me.
Who was it, who once described it as: "German humour is just like jewish humour, except it's not funny"?
My personal email address is 5@.. and I chose it because I'd never change it, because it *doesn't mean anything.* I'm not five years old, my birthday lacks a five in it anywhere, it's not in my driver's license number, my name isn't five letters.. It doesn't mean anything, and that's why it works.
So, I fail to see what this "study" says about me.
It's for perceptions such as this that I recently moved from an old high school GMail address to a more generic MyName@MyPersonallyBrandedDomain.tld address. The former was hindering my professional development, whereas the latter is enhancing it. It's a small thing, but your email address is often a first impression. Ask yourself, "What does ChronicCommenter@Slashdot.org saying about me?"
We all can't be ladiesman217.... :)
Blacker than my baby girl's stare. Black like the veil that the muslimina wear. Black like the planet that they fear...
The local part of my e-mail is drunkennewfiemidget.
I don't consume alcohol. At all.
Although my father is a newfie, I was born in Toronto.
I'm 6' tall.
It's just a fun name I made up.
bubbaforjesus2010@bringontherapture.com
you aint gettin nuthin from my intertube address geeks!
America, Home of the Brave.
So the only example in the summary is wrong. And you can tell by reading the summary. Bravo.
They looked at six personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness and narcissism) and found that extroversion was not consistently predicted based on email address alone.
The other five traits were not only consistently agreed upon by the participants, but they matched up with user's descriptions of their own personalities.
Apparently by skipping the entire content of the paper you missed the point.
Bravo.
"Cornflakes are not the innocent critters they seem"- Sterling Morrison
bulimic anorexic. she loves chunks right?
They're Shards.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083791/
The Dark Crystal (1982)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
(geekily noting that extravert would actually be the Jungian [and therefore technically correct] spelling but for this other word).
How extraverted is honey.bunny77@hotmail.de?
That's a tough one.
I guess what it boils own to is "is executing every motherfucking last one of you and extroverted or introverted thing to do?", and does it matter if you're the 77th one to do it?
sudo ergo sum
Careful, you're dating yourself there ;-)
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
No.
Germans are about as extraverted as it gets. I remember a couple from school who didn't even bother going in the bushes to smoke...
.... only use firstname.surname@isp.tld for job applications. Mine is not used for anything other than job applications and other official business. It's not linked to anything that can be googled either. In fact aside from the small group of people that I socialize with both oti and irl, there's nothing to link the real me to my online persona. The interenet is just entertainment and nothing that happens there should impact on real life.
I only buy pepper spray that's been tested on anti-vivisectionists.
>> Email addresses represent the thinnest slice of information that people receive from one another.
In mine and many others' cases it means: I have a very common firstname/surname pair and turned up late to the gmail party.
I want something people will remember and that's not too easy to mistype, so dan.smith10789 just won't really do.
Though of course once in that situation, the choice of memorable nickname you actually go for may well say something about you - just saying the fact someone has something that's not their name doesn't in itself mean they're a bit loopy :)
This directive requires ALL workers to have far too much spare time & not enough to do. It's a basic human right.
We've been using nickname tells in online poker for years now. Poker is a game of imperfect information, so any little edge is good.
Obviously, someone like ShipItThx will usually be much better than jimmy35 or CIVIC4LIFE. Good players have even started to use reverse nickname tells, always thinking one step ahead.
These days, we usually look at the nicknames only to know in what range a player will be. Some names tell us he'll be an average player at best, while others tell us he'll either be a very good player or a complete donkey, but rarely just a semi-decent guy.
Next time a chunk of money comes aroun for random researches, give your fellow poker players a call. We know a thing or two about gaining information from pretty much anything.
Interesting.
I use a gmail address specifically because I think it's classier than yahoo or whatever, and easier to remember than the address I've had for 15 years or so. Anyone can remember joesmith@gmail.com, while joesmith588@yahoo.com sounds like a loser and joesmith@mail.onrampsacramento.com isn't going to stick in someone's head for even three seconds.
It'd be useful to see what other people think about the perceived value/worth of a domain name, and what running your own domain says about you. The guy who made the LEGO Babbage engine has his page up at woz.org, which *I* think is just the coolest thing ever, but normal people aren't going to recognize that, so that's a gamble: if someone DOES know what that means, the person is going to be very impressed indeed.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
when a person has several different email addresses, at several different domains, with real names, fantasy names, numbers and everything, along with a huge list of Mailinator addresses?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Given the infinitesimally small size of the sample, the researchers have effectively one, single datum, except it isn't even that. The completely casual method of assessment (filling in a questionnaire about yourself - self-image, much?) gives utterly irreproducible results. The complete lack of any numerical or quantifiable data makes drawing conclusions impossible.
Here's a quick assessment of personality of a group with an average age of 16. They're all immature. Some are more mature than others, some will grow more mature with age - others won't. The link with emails addresses is random, as most won't have been able to get their first-choice addresses anyway (the grown-ups will have those).
This is one for the ig-nobel awards.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Thanks. Besides, how would Milgram have created a control group? Would he have ensured that some of the subjects knew that the guy in the booth was an actor? Could he have ensured that he himself didn't know who was in on the gag and who thought it was for for real?
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Good luck finding out what type of person I really am. Bi-polar, multiple personality, having conversations with oneself, I'm a different person every day!
I guess you would then equate VeNoM > crazy?
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
I mean, I know everyone misspells words occasionally, but what does it imply when a user name includes a misspelled literary reference?
Personally, I think it implies that the person has delusions of grandeur that are completely out of range of his merely average intellect, combined with breathtaking carelessness and inattention to detail.
But then, I actually know the guy.
My personal email address is 5@.. and I chose it because I'd never change it, because it *doesn't mean anything.* I'm not five years old, my birthday lacks a five in it anywhere, it's not in my driver's license number, my name isn't five letters.. It doesn't mean anything, and that's why it works.
Dude, everything means something. "5@" is loaded with information.
1. Who the heck gets an email like that? Either a very early adopter, a supporter of a very small ISP or somebody with access to a unique webhost. If you're using one of the giant internet providers, you are tech-savvy enough to know how to tinker with email identifications. Many companies and institutions which have their own email host require employees to conform to email naming standards, so either you didn't acquire that email name through work, you're a guy who buys his own web hosting or works high enough up some sort of chain to be able to do goofy stuff without comment from superiors. The common factors one or both of the following deductions: You're a guy who knows his way around a computer thank-you-very-much or you hold an important (but not too-important, or you wouldn't have such a weird email address) position of some kind. That takes care of the broad guess information. The personality reading is much tighter.
2. You're a guy who doesn't want to advertise silly nonsense in an email name. This doesn't mean you can't be an anime geek, but it does mean you're aware enough to know that such an email name is kind of silly, and you don't want to come across that way. Whatever the case, a name which gives away nothing is consciously chosen for that reason. This suggests you are a cautious person with some pretty good brains, which tells me a lot about how you can be expected to handle yourself in any number of scenarios. Any confidence you have in social situations probably comes from a studied investment of will power rather than a naturally bubbly charisma. This gives me the general locations of a ton of probable fear, anger and happy buttons I could poke around for if I wanted to manipulate you. --Don't worry. I don't do that! :)
3. It's possible that you are also one of those guys who has a no-nonsense somewhat self-important and conservative (though not necessarily in the political sense) attitude who spends a fair bit of energy devoted to sighing heavily at people who ARE silly and thoughtless.
One might be tempted to ask, "Why 5 and not some other number?", but that's too squishy an area to really tread in. Though one might note that had you picked a "1" it would suggest some outward self-importance which you either couldn't embrace or chose not to for some reason. 3 and 7 are 'magic/biblical' numbers, whereas 5 suggests balance and digital thinking. But like I said, that whole area is a bit too squishy for my liking.
In any case, that's all just from a number "5". I know what you're not, and that gives me a ton of profile to work with. I could be wrong about all of it, of course, but those patterns do jump to mind first.
-FL
not necessarily. That movie is older than I am, but I still know it and love it. And dream about it...call it on weekends...send it embarrassing text messages...
Er, that is, uh---it's a good movie. I have to go now.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
May be.
But what does it say about a guy who collects and also remembers such email addresses?
cheapcrackwhore@gmail.com say about me?
The only major differences between me now and me 10 years ago are that I'm a better programmer, I have better Halloween costume making abilities, play slightly fewer videogames per year, and have a girlfriend.
Cow Cube
You couldn't work out anything about me from my email address
Dual Century Programming: Yeah I know
Since when can horseshit like this get away with masquerading as "science"?
So, my spam email address is bloodfartcolada@gmail.com, what do you infer from that???
Whenever I look at my mailing list requests, some guy with the address fuck@you.com keeps signing up. What does that say?
UTF-8: There and Back Again
What was their basis for defining "neuroticism"? This is a very difficult condition to diagnose. The rest are also quite subjective, I would have liked to have known how they arose at just these criteria, and not something like "leadership" or "experienced". The criteria are so not-broad that I'm not surprised those narrow designations reinforced their conclusions.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
firstname.lastname@gmail.com = lazy
Not all jokes can be translated because they rely on the history and culture that is typical to a region. In spite of that, many people continue trying to translate jokes, thinking they are doing it right.
The solution is to substitute jokes with local equivalents (if any), thus engage in a serious joke l10n project.
Of course, some jokes are culture agnostic, and are instead tied to a certain professional field (like the one about perfectly spherical horses moving in vacuum) - those cannot be understood by folk with a different academic background.
Cultural context is very important for jokes, trying to tell a joke out of context is like %insert car analogy here%.
The saddest poem
chunky-lover53@aol.com
One might be tempted to ask, "Why 5 and not some other number?"
I can answer that: 1 to 4 are mine, and I own the mail-server :-)
Do people think my new usual nomme de web "kirkjerk" means I'm a jerk for real?
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
the sample sizes are far to small
now this might be a neat concept to look into, seeing as how people often select names to reflect aspects of their person they wish to highlight, but this smells mostly like bullshit
I guess this similar graphology. A pseudo-science, that is.