Your Facebook Photo Says More Than You Think, Research Says
A photo is worth a thousand words, as the saying goes, but your Facebook photo might be worth more. It is, after all, available to the entire world. Let's face it; we're all vain to varying degrees, and have some sort of self-image that we're constantly trying to project online. A newly released study aims to determine just what it means to project our avatar through the lens of social networking sites.
Researchers from Sonoma State University recently found that images can pretty reliably convey some, though not all, personality traits. In the study, 12 random people looked at photos of 123 undergraduate students in different poses -- both
"neutral" and "spontaneous." (The "neutral" poses were dictated by researchers, while the "spontaneous" poses were self-directed.) The subjects were then asked to rank the photos according to 10 traits: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness, likability, self-esteem, loneliness, religiosity, and political orientation. In order to judge the accuracy of the subjects' appraisals, scientists compared them to the self-evaluations submitted by the photographed students.
Researchers from Sonoma State University recently found that images can pretty reliably convey some, though not all, personality traits. In the study, 12 random people looked at photos of 123 undergraduate students in different poses -- both
"neutral" and "spontaneous." (The "neutral" poses were dictated by researchers, while the "spontaneous" poses were self-directed.) The subjects were then asked to rank the photos according to 10 traits: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness, likability, self-esteem, loneliness, religiosity, and political orientation. In order to judge the accuracy of the subjects' appraisals, scientists compared them to the self-evaluations submitted by the photographed students.
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