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."'

Comments

What next?

[hezekiah957]

Next: scientists discover that how you look and act reflects on your personality, too.

Re:What next?

[bob_herrick]

Bollocks. The correlations are weak, at best, and are barely distinguishable from chance. E.g., Consider Table 2. There are 196 entries in the top section of the table. The excess of postive correlations over negative corrlations is a grand total of 8. Assuming 50/50 odds, that excess will happen about 11% of the time just by chance alone. When you factor in the conditional probablity of publishing results (i.e., the argument that if they were any weaker, the data would never have been published), this has to be an extraordinarily weak finding.

The average correlation (without regard to sign) in the same section of Table 2 is a whoppping 0.067, suggesting an average explanatory power on the order of 0.5%. I suppose such power might have some benefit to someone that sends a lot of e-mails to random addresses like spammers, but for the odinary Joe or Jo, this is not a lot to go on.

Bad example?

[Prien715]

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.

In other news... another irrelevant study!

[cwAllenPoole]

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".

Re:In other news... another irrelevant study!

[Anonymous Coward]

... 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...

Except these are made up words with little or no agreed-upon meaning. That's entirely different from language.

I would not expect different people to have the same reaction to regular names. Someone whose sister is named Sarah will jump to completely different conclusions about someone else with that name than will a person who has three exes with that name. So why would I expect it of email names?

Re:Extraversion where?

[shoutatchickens]

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).

Maybe, just maybe, HoneyBunny77 is a 31 year old who likes the movie Pulp Fiction?

Re:Erste gepostung

[Arkham]

How extraverted is honey.bunny77@hotmail.de

My first thought was "spammer". I suspect that says more about me than the owner of the email.

Re:How to choose a roommate by their email address

[hey!]

Well, I imagine the problem wouldn't be so much with the roommate, as the people who come ... er ... are associated with her. It's wise to remember that when you get a roommate, s/he comes with relatives, friends, acquaintances and possibly clients of sorts. Orgy girl's party might be fun to drop in on, but you wouldn't want to live there.

Still, it might be interesting to be persuaded otherwise.

Re:Or Creativity!!

[pablo.cl]

I think she is 31 years old.

why don't you email him

[toby]

and ask.

Re:When reading this...

[nyctopterus]

You know, it's not a good idea to base what you think of a large and diverse scientific research program on a single article linked to from slashdot. I don't know how this research links in to larger questions in psychology, and I bet you don't either.

Email Address as a First Impression

[StephenW]

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?"

Re:How to choose a roommate by their email address

[spun]

My favorite hot girl roommate was a paranoid schizophrenic model. Seriously. "Do I look okay? STOP LOOKING AT ME!" You'd think having a hot girl run into your room at night and jump into bed with you and your girlfriend would be, well, hot. But not when she's screaming about the demon voices and begging you to protect her from Satan.

Poker players knew it

[Dekar]

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.

600 from how many billion emailrs?

[petes_PoV]

A sample of a few hundred, using a self-assessment method, with an average age in the teens? Come on, this isn't science - it's a party game.

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.

Re:Erste gepostung

[aetherworld]

Unless you were joking, though that wasn't exactly a great success either.

Proves that Grand-grand-grandparent was right. Us germans really have no sense of humour :(