Slashdot Mirror
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."'
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.
What does the address chunkylover53@aol.com tell you?
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
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.
From that I can tell you are a some what a geek who visits sites like SlashDot. It also tells me that you are concerned about your email address being harvested and eventually being used as a target for spam.
Now do me. My email address is: useless.research.nominations _at_ elmuerte.com
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?
also, if he's got "creepy" in his username...
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
that if you have multiple email addresses you have multiple personalities?
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
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.
So, of course, you called her immediately and asked her when she could move in?
You tell this story like it was a bad thing...
Life needs more saving throws.
If his/her address is s.ballmer@microsoft.com, they might be short-tempered.
"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
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 live in Sweden, and here the unemployment benefits are great. One of the conditions for receiving benefits is that you keep looking for a job...
Hence, I was once presented with an application sent from a guy with the illustrious address of lazybastard@coffebreak [rest of address withheld].
True story.
as my email address. That way, anyone can learn anything they want to know about me.
Mac user.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
...says the guy whose username starts with "Mrs" and ends with "Guido"?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
One person that I had business dealings with had stoned@... for his business email address. The firm's email addy convention was lastname, first initial. It did make for intersesting conference calls. Later it was changed to lastname.firstname as he moved up in the company.
You've got a good start your name and DOB in there, but if you really want to obfuscate and anonymize you need to add your social security number.
Creationists.
I'm disabling ads until because I choose not to reward redesigns that are less usable than "view source".
I still feel insulted a little when I read things like these.
So let me get this straight. I'm guessing you are probably of German descent, and you're insulted that someone was coyly and humorously teasing Germans...for lacking a sense of humor?
I just wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything... :-p
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
But that was Austrian humour