Computer-based personality judgments are more accurate than those made by humans
Open accessAbstract
Significance: This study compares the accuracy of personality judgment—a ubiquitous and important social-cognitive activity—between computer models and humans. Using several criteria, we show 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.
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As compared to traditional questionnaire-based assessments, language-based approaches seem to suffer from fewer self-report biases.
“As compared to traditional questionnaire-based assessments, such approaches seem to suffer from fewer self-report biases (Youyou, Kosinski, & Stillwell, 2015) and generally leverage a larger amount of information per person (Kern et al., 2016).”
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- Authors
- Youyou, W., Kosinski, M., & Stillwell, D.
- Affiliations
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2015-01-12
- Volume
- 112
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1036-1040
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC4313801
- OpenAlex
- W2154868463
- Cited by
- 1,086
- References
- 5
- Citations by year
- 2026: 47 · 2025: 68 · 2024: 94 · 2023: 88 · 2022: 112 · 2021: 120 · 2020: 170 · 2019: 117 · 2018: 111 · 2017: 78 · 2016: 54 · 2015: 25 · 2013: 2
- FWCI
- 110.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- public-domain
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion, public-domain)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Microsoft Research
- University of Cambridge
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- Advanced Research Projects Agency
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Traits and Psychology
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Privacy, Security, and Data Protection
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
- Keywords
- personality judgment, digital footprint, Facebook likes, Big Five personality traits, generalizability, substance use, political attitudes, physical health, psychological assessment, privacy
- MeSH terms
- Computer Simulation, Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted, Female, Humans, Male, Personality, Surveys and Questionnaires, Social Media
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