Things One 'Likes' On Facebook Predicts Personality

According to a new study, the pages a person "likes" on Facebook predicts that person's personality in terms of sexuality, intelligence as well as political leaning.

According to a new study, Facebook can also be a personality predictor than just a social networking site. A report by BBC states that what a person "likes" on Facebook predicts that person's personality in terms of sexuality, intelligence as well as political leaning.

Researchers at Cambridge University used algorithms to predict politics, religion, sexual orientation and race. According to privacy campaigners, studies and findings such as this should "ring alarm bells" for users.

The study was conducted on 58,000 voluntary participants who provided researchers with their Facebook "likes" data, their demographic information and participated in psychometric testing results - designed to highlight personality traits.

There results were 88 percent accurate in predicting male sexuality, 95 percent accurate in distinguishing race like African-American from Caucasian-American and 85 percent accurate in differentiating Republicans from Democrats. Christians and Muslims were correctly classified in 82% of cases and relationship status and substance abuse was predicted with accuracy between 65% and 73%.

While the study comes as good news for companies wanting to make a profit from customized user marketing, privacy campaigners feel it could harm the privacy of users.

"I appreciate automated book recommendations, or Facebook selecting the most relevant stories for my newsfeed. However, I can imagine situations in which the same data and technology is used to predict political views or sexual orientation, posing threats to freedom or even life," said Michael Kosinski, lead researcher on the project. "Facebook likes are public by default but it is not that Facebook is forcing you to make them public; you have a choice to change your privacy settings."

Kosinski said this new study should ring alarm bells for all those who think privacy settings are good enough to secure a person's personal information online. He said people need to rethink the amount of data they are "voluntarily sharing."

"Sharing individual likes or pages might not seem hugely intrusive, but it allows individuals to be categorised and behaviour predicted in areas that are far more personal and sensitive than people realize," BBC quoted Nick Pickles, director of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch as saying. "Yet again, it is clear the lack of transparency about how users' data is being used will lead to entirely justified fears about our data being exploited for commercial gain."