Computer-based personality judgments are more accurate than those made by humans

2015/01/12 by Wu Youyou, Michał Kosiński, David Stillwell · 1 voice · 28 citations
Psychology · #Cognitive Abilities and Testing #Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior #Personality Traits and Psychology

paper · pdf · doi:10.1073/pnas.1418680112

openalex publication_date 2015/01/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Judging others' personalities is an essential skill in successful social living, as personality is a key driver behind people's interactions, behaviors, and emotions. Although accurate personality judgments stem from social-cognitive skills, developments in machine learning show that computer models can also make valid judgments. This study compares the accuracy of human and computer-based personality judgments, using a sample of 86,220 volunteers who completed a 100-item personality questionnaire. We show that (i) computer predictions based on a generic digital footprint (Facebook Likes) are more accurate (r = 0.56) than those made by the participants' Facebook friends using a personality questionnaire (r = 0.49); (ii) computer models show higher interjudge agreement; and (iii) computer personality judgments have higher external validity when predicting life outcomes such as substance use, political attitudes, and physical health; for some outcomes, they even outperform the self-rated personality scores. Computers outpacing humans in personality judgment presents significant opportunities and challenges in the areas of psychological assessment, marketing, and privacy.

Citations

• Accurate Personality Judgment
• The international personality item pool and the future of public-domain personality measures

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Discussions

• Well, there is the work by Youyou et al. doi.org/10.1073/pnas... (and other papers) showing that you can infer personality from people's likes on Facebook. So you just need to target ads to likes/inte [bsky, 1 points, 1 comments]

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