News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Algorithm predicts Five Factor personality type better th... by therealdrag0 on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @07:20PM (#8883484)
Isn't it a bit sandy of a foundation to base the whole thing on self-judgments? Is it surprising that self-judged personality tests is going to correlate well with self-picked likes?
Re:Algorithm predicts Five Factor personality type better th... by gwern on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @08:03PM (#8883652)
The Big Five has a lot of external validity (as do the regression estimates of Big Five, if you read the paper), so that's fine. If things like Conscientiousness really do predict income, longevity, etc, then even if they're a 'self-judgment', why is that a problem.
Re:Algorithm predicts Five Factor personality type better th... by threatofrain on Wednesday January 14, 2015 @01:09AM (#8884613)
These self judgments also tend to be correlated with judgments made by friends, family, spouse, therapist, and with personality tests. In other words, even though there are differences between the groups, people are relatively self-aware.

I'd be interested to see here if friends in face-to-face contexts perform similarly to the Facebook context.

Re:Algorithm predicts Five Factor personality type better th... by Houshalter on Wednesday January 14, 2015 @02:23AM (#8884817)
I don't think it's self judgement, they are asked to take a personality test which is a bunch of questions. The personality traits are literally defined as the way people answer the questions on the test.
Re:Algorithm predicts Five Factor personality type better th... by peteretep on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @07:43PM (#8883566)
It's not self-judgements, it's people expressing a like for something completely unrelated. Nobody "Like"d Nikki Minaj because they were hoping to show themselves as Outgoing and Active.