Another incredible response from a simple Tweet, so here’s a big thank you to everyone who’s taken part in our study so far. If you haven’t take part, and you use Twitter, check it out at www.bigfive.me …

The story so far

In late January we launched a follow-on experiment to our 2011 Facebook Big Five Experiment,  focusing instead on what Twitter activity might reveal about someone’s personality. We’d had a steady trickle of people take the personality test and after 6 days we had 24 participants.  That doesn’t sound a lot, but it’s about the rate we were expecting based on our 2011 Facebook study (which resulted in 527 participants).

Towards the end of January 2012, we wrote an email to Stephen Fry’s people (@StephenFry) asking (nicely) for a Tweet.  We were not expecting anything as a lot of people ask Stephen Fry for a lot of Tweets, but late on February 1st he sent this Tweet….

 

 

We leapt from 24 participants to just over 2,000 in little over a day which was incredible.

Today, February 13th…

We also approached skateboard legend and philanthropist Tony Hawk and today (February 13th) he kindly sent this tweet…

… as I write this post, we’re at 2,804 participants, making this the biggest study of its particular kind.  The participation of Tony’s followers (an indeed everyone) is truly appreciated. You have all contributed to the largest, independent study of personality and Twitter activity to date.

Why did we approach Tony Hawk? Well, Tony Hawk has been a keen user of Twitter from very early on and has used it to truly engage his fans. As his bio states “I try to read all replies“.  For the past few years Tony has run his “Tony Hawk Twitter Hunt” (#THTH), where he (with the help of some friends and  fans) hides skateboards around the world and Tweets out clues in an Easter Egg hunt with a twist.  If you’ve not heard about his Twitter Hunt, check out his page on it here and check this video and blog post (by @mediakinetic) to get a sense of what it’s all about.

We’re very appreciative of Tony’s Tweet as we’re not only fans of his skateboarding, but also his pioneering use of Twitter to bring a smile to his fans faces and promote his Foundation, building skateparks in low-income communities.

So thank you again to Tony and his fans for contributing to what we feel is important research.

Track our progress

You can stay tuned to our progress by following @The_OPF on Twitter or liking our Facebook page or simply checking back on this site periodically.

 

What happens next?

We will be comparing participants Twitter activity (Tweets per day, type of language used, Friend/Follower ratio etc) with users self reported personality traits.  We aim to see just what can be revealed through Tweeting. Our Facebook study presented some interesting results, which you can read about here . We also talk about both studies in a recent BBC Radio 5 Live interview, which you can read more about here.

While current statistical analysis means that we should be careful what we attempt to deduce about someone based on their Facebook activity, we’ve been talking to researchers at a US university about different approaches to applying predictive models to the data.  Early results suggest that it may be possible to rank people based on certain personality traits with a reasonably high degree of accuracy (much better than current statistical analysis provides).

What does this mean? We’ll that’s a good question. At the very least, our  Facebook study points to critical questions around the possible need for regulatory controls and/or raising awareness amongst users in order to prevent the misuse of information derived from Facebook and other online social network activity.

…and finally

Our intent isn’t to scare people away from Social Media. In fact, as individuals, we rather enjoy its benefits, but we do want to examine its potential abuse and make people aware so that they can make informed choices about how much information to make public and in the case of employers, critically evaluate their hiring practices.

Thank you again,

 

Chris

P.S. If you found this personality study interesting, I’d highly recommend the  following books.

 

	“Snoop” Professor Sam Gosling’s highly readable book that reveals what your stuff reveals about your personality.	“The Secret Life of Pronouns” Professor James Pennebaker looks at the words we use in everyday life and what they might reveal about us.	“The Psychopath Test” From the author of ‘The Men Who Stare At Goats”, Jon Ronson looks at Psychopathy.	“Virtually You” Elias Aboujaoude, MD examines how people differ on and offline. This is a fascinating book and really calls into question the validity of Cyber Vetting as a predictor of job performance.

 

In the spirit of transparency, the links above are to Amazon .co.uk and .com.   Through Amazon’s affiliate scheme, we’d make a tiny fraction of the purchace price on each sale. We are not in this to make money at all, so we’d donate any money received to Great Ormond Street Childrens Hospital in London.