The Day Has Come: Facebook Knows You More Than Your Friends
A study recently published in PNAS concludes that a computer is capable of predict a person’s personality more accurately than their own friends and family …from the analysis of some of the data that we have left in Facebook
The researchers conclude that, by analyzing 10 “likes,” a computer can describe our personality better than our co-workers; at 70, better than our friends or roommates; with 150, better than a family member; and with 300, better than a spouse. This demonstrates that machines, despite not having the social skills to interpret language and human intentions, may be able to make valid judgments about us by accessing our information. digital footprint on the internet
For this research, a personality test based on the Big Five model was administered to 86,220 people. Each of them had to fill out these 100-item forms designed to record information about the different traits that define our way of acting, perceiving and feeling things.
In addition to having the information obtained through the personality tests, some volunteers also gave their permission for the research team to analyze the “I like it” that they had given from their Facebook accounts. These “likes” were not those that can be given by clicking on Facebook statuses, photos or videos, but rather those that are associated with pages about movies, books, television shows, celebrities, etc.
Later, a software found existing trends and relationships between personality traits and certain preferences by one or another page located on this social network. For example, it was found that people with a high score in the trait “Openness to Change” tend to show a fondness for Salvador Dalí or TED Talks, while extroverts show a liking for dancing. It may be a conclusion that is based on stereotypes, and yet there is empirical data that supports these ideas.
While the software was playing to learn how human behavior works, a group was formed with the others raters who had to predict personality scores of the volunteers. This group was made up of friends, family and acquaintances of the participants who had completed the test. Each of these flesh-and-blood judges had to describe the personality of the subject evaluated by filling out a questionnaire. The results (somewhat humiliating for our species) that head the article emerged when compare the degree of accuracy with which humans and machines predict personality scores. Only a husband or wife can rival computer-generated personality models from a few data obtained by Facebook.
Electronic brains
How can software speak so accurately about aspects that define us and make us unique? The biggest advantage they have over us is their access to massive amounts of information staff and their ability to relate data to others and find behavioral patterns in fractions of a second. Thanks to this, computer-generated personality models can predict certain behavioral patterns automatically, without the need for social skills and with more precision than human beings.
As a consequence, today we are closer to know the traits certain aspects of people’s psychology without having to interact with them face to face, after information about the movies, books and celebrities we like passes through a kitchen of algorithms. Taking into account that the average number of “likes” that each of us has accumulated on Facebook is around 227, we can imagine what this psychometric innovation means for statistical centers, personnel selection agencies or even groups. dedicated to espionage and social control. All this makes the website created by Mark Zuckerberg look more like a tool for market segmentation than a social network.
Furthermore, the consequences that this may have for the world of advertising and marketing They are evident. If today it is already possible to roughly estimate a person’s tastes and hobbies from their Google searches, perhaps in the future a car brand will be able to know which model may attract us most based on the fact that one day we did about twenty clicks on a social network.
One of the paradoxes of this psychological evaluation methodology is that qualities that make us social and unique beings are studied without the need for social interaction and applying generic rules on human behavior. This perspective can be so attractive to organizations that University of Cambridge It already has an application that allows you to see what your Facebook profile, tweets and other forms of digital footprint say about your psychological profile. One of the supposed advantages that can be read on its website is: “avoids having to ask unnecessary questions.” How this methodology will impact privacy protection remains to be seen.
Big Data: Facebook and its database
In short, it is currently possible that computers are increasingly capable of infer information about us that we have never declared directly, and that this information is of higher quality than that inferred by anyone. All of this can be made possible, to a large extent, by Big Data analysis. on Facebook: the mass processing of data (personal or otherwise) that we provide of our own volition. The team of researchers talks about this qualitative leap in the conclusions of their article:
Popular culture has come to depict robots that outperform humans at making psychological inferences. In the movie Her, for example, the protagonist falls in love with his operating system. Through managing and analyzing his fingerprint, his computer can understand and react to his thoughts and needs much better than other humans, including his girlfriend and his closest friends. Our research, along with advances in robotics, provides empirical evidence that this hypothetical situation is becoming increasingly possible as digital assessment tools mature.
What will computing be capable of when a computer is able to read not only Facebook pages, but also photographs and texts with the same level of accuracy? Will we be beings without any mystery in the face of mass-produced processors? Whether this form of understanding of the human being that machines can achieve in the future reflects our essence as sentient and unique people is something worth reflecting on.
