We are pleased to report a certain year-over-year continuity in our research on how accurately people form first-impressions of others from their online profiles on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and a million Ning networks.
Last year at the Int'l Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM 2008), we presented a paper looking at what you have to say on your profile for visitors to "get" you, that is, see your personality as you see it. Read the full paper here.
This year we return to ICWSM 2009 with a paper looking at what kind of photo you need to post for people to get you. Here's the new paper.
We're starting to understand this issue quite well. Allow me to summarize.
First, some methodology. How do we measure the accuracy of an impression from an online profile? Well, first we built YouJustGetMe.com, which is a fully functional social networking site and Facebook application, but one that asks all members to fill out a personality questionnaire. Then they invite others (friends, dates, and other users who are randomly assigned to them) to try to guess how they answered the same personality questions. Using statistics published by psychologists David Funder and David Kenny, we score the correspondence between the self-rating and the guess. Users immediately get to see that score and discuss it.
With that, the papers we published simply test what elements of the profile best predict higher impression agreement. The first paper tested textual elements. The second paper tested elements of the profile photos.
Before we tell you what we learned, some theory. What are we forming impressions of? Following Goldberg, we believe there are 5 basic personality "domains." They spell OCEAN (Open-Mindedness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, & Neuroticism). Are all the domains easy to read in strangers? No. You see Conscientiousness and Extraversion almost instantly, but it takes longer to read the other domains. Do you need to be face to face? No. You "get" people you see in video, hear on the phone, and (as we've shown) whose profiles you read on Facebook. In fact, a consistent finding is emerging that you see Agreeableness and Neuroticism even better from an online profile than a short ftf interaction. That's right, better.
Here's a great image our co-author and colleage Sam Gosling pulled together to show you what sources of information tell you about what personality traits:
So what do you need to say and show on your profile so others get you?
These textual pieces of information help people get you:
These pieces of information actually hinder people from getting you:
These pieces of information don't do a thing to reveal your personality:
And the new paper suggests that these types of pictures help people get you:
So far, we have found these elements of the photo don't matter:
Of course, what we're testing is whether people's impressions of you agree with your self-impressions. That is, the above elements only affect whether people see you as you see yourself, whether you are accurately conveying your personality through your online profile. We are not testing whether these elements affect how much people like you. For that, we're sure that political leanings, sexual allure, your favorite movie, and your dog might well be important. But so far, it doesn't look like that stuff tells folks who you are.
Why does this matter? Remember these findings when you want to make a dating profile that doesn't give misconceptions about yourself. Think about touching up your profiles that employers see like on LinkedIn or other places. If you design websites, rethink whether you need to make profiles that encourage the cliched "I like books, movies, and long walks on the beach" profile. Those might not be really saying anything.
YouJustGetMe.com just broke 25,000 impressions of others personality. Check it out. And if you have a study idea, contact us. If you crunch numbers, we share data.
