Mark Zuckerberg. (Photo by Robert Scoble via Flickr.)
Mark Zuckerberg. (Photo by Robert Scoble via Flickr.)

Researchers have confirmed it: They’ve developed an algorithm that is better able to predict a person’s personality traits than humans can — all based on Facebook data.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge and Stanford University conducted their test on more than 17,000 Facebook users. The participants completed a personality test and gave access to their “likes.” Their real-life friends also took a survey describing the FB users, rating each person on OCEAN traits: Openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism, according to the New York Times.

“It needed access to just 10 likes to beat a work colleague, 70 to beat a roommate, 150 to beat a parent or sibling, and 300 to beat a spouse,” reported the Times.

Published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they concluded that “computers’ judgments of people’s personalities based on their digital footprints are more accurate and valid than judgments made by their close others or acquaintances (friends, family, spouse, colleagues, etc.). Our findings highlight that people’s personalities can be predicted automatically and without involving human social-cognitive skills.”

What’s the takeaway from all this? “Computers could replace humans in practical settings that require personality analysis,” the study’s lead author, Youyou Wu, a graduate student in psychology at Cambridge, told the Times.

So, it’s going to get a lot harder to bluff your way through that job interview in the near future. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

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