Licked and exposed

At the entrance there are likes that you put to different pages. At the exit is your psychological portrait in the terms of the “big five” of personal qualities. Psychologist Mikhal Kosinsky from Stanford (USA) and two of his co -authors from Cambridge (Great Britain), Yui ( Wu Youyou ) and David Stillwell, they say : a simple computer program has a more accurate portrait than close friends who have known you for more than a year.

The first work on this topic came out with Stillella and Kosinsky in 2013-and entered the top five of the most discussed articles in the history of the scientific journal ProChedings of The National Academy of Sciences . Then the authors argued that the activity on Facebook allows you to predict sexual orientation and nationality with good accuracy. Paul and age. Belief and political views. Do you use drugs. And even whether your parents divorced before you have reached the age of majority.

The main surprise was that such conclusions can be drawn in mass and automatic mode: the methodology was checked in a sample of 58 thousand people. The program is not at all interested in the content of the records - she is enough for a list of pages that a person shook. Moreover, rectilinear ties (“If a person is in the community of LGBT activists-perhaps he is gay”), surprisingly, they give not as much information as non-obvious: say, like the satirical television show Colbert Report is a high IQ indicator, and Harley - Davidson motorcycles like.

We ourselves can make the first impression of someone, running through our eyes the first two or three pages of his Facebook. If not the age when parents divorced, then at least the gender, age and political views are easy to find out in this way in a matter of minutes. Who is familiar with a person longer - has a completely enormous advantage over the robot analyzing likes, in the matter of his attitude to drugs, religion or sexual orientation. The circle of communication is chosen by interests, and everyone tends to tell friends about these interests. Muslims are friends with Muslims, monarchists with monarchists, gays with gays.

Facebook huskies allow you to predict sexual orientation and nationality with good accuracy. Paul and age. Belief and political views.

But in addition to these protocol social characteristics of a person (Christian, heterosexual, son of divorced parents), there are others who, rather, describe the “inner world” in its pure form and predict human behavior in different possible emergency situations.

And in the case of the “inner world”, even the strongest friendship does not guarantee from errors.

With the presentation of Hans Aizenka, the author of the famous intellect test, a five-factor personality model has taken root among psychologists: a set of five qualities relatively independent from each other, to which all the others can be reduced, from impulsiveness to interest in the problem of UFOs and brownies. “Big Five” is the openness of the new, conscientiousness, extraversion, goodwill and neuroticism. Each of five can be evaluated on a scale from zero to one.

A questionnaire of 100 points that allows you to set these grades at the request of the authors filled 86,220 volunteers. For 70 520 of them, the authors, using their program analyzing the likes, built “psychological portraits” - that is, strictly speaking, they received a set of the same five digits, describing the features from extraversion to neuroticism. What, say, are especially often like people who are highly open to the new? Lectures TED , as well as pages about Salvador Dali and meditation.

In addition, the closest of the Facebook friends of volunteers sent another profile. Scientists suggested reply “yes” or “no” to just 10 questions. Does he have frequent mood changes? Is he the soul of the company? Does he love order? Some were evaluated by one friend, and some two. After automatically processing the answers, the researchers again obtained the characteristics of a person in the terms of the "Big Five".

The quality of assessments depended greatly on the type of relationship that are for friendship on Facebook : spouses on average cope with the task of better neighbors in a jointly rented apartment, and those, in turn, imagine a person much more accurately than his work colleagues.

The computer analyzing the behavior on Facebook left people with their estimates far behind (and the only ones to whom he lost exactly at least a couple of points is husbands and wife). Friends, colleagues and even the family, on the basis of all their life experience, described acquaintances and relatives worse than a program for which a person is just a few hundred likes.

Not a single special service in the world has still enough free hands and ears to rake the entire Internet traffic to which they have unhindered access.

Kosinsky and co-authors carefully remarks: “People can experience distrust of digital technologies or even start abandoning them as soon as they understand that their government, Internet provider, browser, social network or search engine are able to evaluate their personal qualities more accurately than the closest family members.”

What is new here? We seem to be in the know that we voluntarily post a lot of personal information into the network, and in theory it can abuse the attackers, from terrorists and the FSB to funeral agents who will begin to call and offer their services half an hour after the recording about the death of a relative. After Snowden, a smaller part of humanity began to encrypt the mail and stopped trusting Google , and the big one got used to the thought that they were listened to the clock.

These fears are still balanced by the fact that not a single special service in the world would have enough free hands and ears to rake the entire Internet traffic to which they have unhindered access. If in each ashtray it is hidden on the microphone, then at the other end of the wire, at least the same number of people in headphones - one on an ashtray.

However, it turns out that no specially trained people need to read our posts and think about the content. Likes say much more. The work on their analysis, as the authors proved, can easily be put on the stream and at the exit to have something like a passport data for everyone. It is one thing when this requires additional time spent, and quite another - when even a physical education teacher at the school can look at the list of parents and find out who is open to the new and wishes the strange, and who is a neurotic introvert, and taking into account this knowledge worse treat children.

In addition, knowledge of a set of five digits describing a person makes any manipulations much more targeted. In 2012, Jacob Hirsch from Toronto University and two of his co -authors tried to adjust advertisements for different types of personality. Suppose to sell the same toothpaste, for some semantic emphasis is made on the benefits (“strengthens your teeth”), for others - to reduce harm (“prevents caries”). For advertisers, this approach is not news. But here the audience was shared not by social signs, like marketers (housewives for 35 left, pensioners to the right) - and in accordance with the features from the "large five". On a sample of 324 experimental, it worked perfectly.

New ways to confuse us or to influence decision -making, based on the "digital traces" of the personality, is not necessarily evil. Kosinsky, U and Stillwell discuss this with optimism of futurologists from the 1960s: “In the future, people will be able to abandon their own judgments and trust the computer in such matters as choosing their own classes, careers or even romantic partners.”