Personality and patterns of Facebook usage
Abstract
We show how users' activity on Facebook relates to their personality, as measured by the standard Five Factor Model. Our dataset consists of the personality profiles and Facebook profile data of 180,000 users. We examine correlations between users' personality and the properties of their Facebook profiles such as the size and density of their friendship network, number uploaded photos, number of events attended, number of group memberships, and number of times user has been tagged in photos. Our results show significant relationships between personality traits and various features of Facebook profiles. We then show how multivariate regression allows prediction of the personality traits of an individual user given their Facebook profile. The best accuracy of such predictions is achieved for Extraversion and Neuroticism, the lowest accuracy is obtained for Agreeableness, with Openness and Conscientiousness lying in the middle.
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This is the first use of status updates from this dataset to link with personality.
“Previously, profile information (i.e. network metrics, relationship status) from users in this dataset have been linked with personality [83], but this is the first use of its status updates.”
From Personality, Gender, and Age in the Language of Social Media: The Open-Vocabulary Approach (2013) · cites this paper as [83]
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References 26 · Cited by 380
- Authors
- Bachrach, Y., Kosinski, M., Graepel, T., Kohli, P., & Stillwell, D.
- Affiliations
- Microsoft (United States) (US)
- University of Cambridge
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 4th Annual ACM Web Science Conference
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2012-06-22
- Pages
- 24-32
- OpenAlex
- W2080431972
- Cited by
- 380
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 38 · 2020: 32 · 2019: 28 · 2018: 42 · 2017: 43 · 2016: 44 · 2015: 31 · 2014: 36 · 2013: 20 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 253.10
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- ACM Web Science Conference (WebSci) (publishedVersion, public-domain)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Traits and Psychology
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Privacy, Security, and Data Protection
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Impact of Technology on Adolescents
- Keywords
- Facebook use, personality traits, Big Five personality traits, social network profiles, image sharing, group membership, personality prediction, extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness
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