Inferring Personality From Email Addresses

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday August 13, @09:24AM
from the i-really-dont'-even-care-for-tacos-that-much dept.

paleshadows writes "Three researchers from the University of Leipzig published an interesting paper titled 'How extraverted is honey.bunny77@hotmail.de? Inferring personality from e-mail addresses' (PDF). From the abstract: 'Email addresses represent the thinnest slice of information that people receive from one another. Using 599 e-mail addresses of young adults, their self-reported personality scores and the personality judgments of 100 independent observers, it was shown that personality impressions based solely on e-mail addresses were consensually shared by observers. Moreover, these impressions contained some degree of validity. This was true for neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and narcissism but not for extraversion."'