̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - psychometrics

Online tool can measure individuals’ likelihood to fall for internet scams

sc604 — Wed, 04 Apr 2018 10:21:58 +0000

̽��ֱ��psychometric tool, developed by researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Helsinki, asks participants to answer a range of questions in order to measure how likely they are to respond to persuasive techniques. ̽��ֱ��test, called Susceptibility to Persuasion II (StP-II) is freely available and consists of the StP-II scale and several other questions to understand persuadability better. A brief, automated, interpretation of the results is displayed at the end of the questionnaire.

̽��ֱ��results of the test can be used to predict who will be more likely to become a victim of cybercrime, although the researchers say that StP-II could also be used for hiring in certain professions, for the screening of military personnel or to establish the psychological characteristics of criminal hackers. Their results are reported in the journal PLOS One.

“Scams are essentially like marketing offers, except they’re illegal,” said paper’s first author Dr David Modic from Cambridge’s Department of Computer Science and Technology. “Just like in advertising, elements of consumer psychology and behavioural economics all come into the design of an online scam, which is why it’s useful to know which personality traits make people susceptible to them.”

Modic and his colleagues at the ̽��ֱ�� of Exeter designed an initial version of the test five years ago that yielded solid results but was not sufficiently detailed. ̽��ֱ��new version is far more comprehensive and robust.

“We are not aware of an existing scale that would measure all the constructs that are part of StP-II,” said Modic, who is also a senior member of King’s College, Cambridge. “There are existing scales that measure individual traits, but when combined, the sheer length of these scales would present the participant with a psychometric tool that is almost unusable.”

̽��ֱ��questions in StP-II fall into 10 categories, measuring different traits which might make people more susceptible to fraud: the ability to premeditate, consistency, sensation seeking, self-control, social influence, need for similarity, attitude towards risk, attitude towards advertising, cognition and uniqueness. Participants are given a score out of seven in each of the ten areas.

Using a large data set obtained from a collaboration with the BBC, the researchers found that the strongest predictor was the ability to premeditate: individuals who fail to consider the possible consequences of a particular action are more likely to engage with a fraudster. However, they found that the likelihood of falling for one of the measured categories of Internet fraud is partially explained by at least one of the mechanisms in StP-II.

“Over the past ten years, crime, like everything else, has moved online,” said co-author Professor Ross Anderson, also from Cambridge’s Department of Computer Science. “This year, about a million UK households will be the victim of typical household crime, such as burglary, where the average victim is an elderly working-class woman. However, now 2.5 million households will be the victims of an online or electronic scam, where the victims are younger and more educated. Crime is moving upmarket.”

“Scams have been around for hundreds of years, and over the centuries, they haven’t really changed that much – the only difference now is with the internet, it requires a lot less effort to do it,” said Modic.

̽��ֱ��researchers say that despite the changing demographics of crime victims, there isn’t a ‘typical victim of cybercrime. “Older generations might be seen as less internet-savvy, but younger generations are both more exposed to scams and might be seen as more impulsive,” said co-author Jussi Palomӓki, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Helsinki’s Cognitive Science Unit. “There isn’t a specific age range – there are many different risk factors.”

“ ̽��ֱ��immediate benefit of StP-II is that people will get an indication of the sorts of things they should look out for – I’m not saying it’s a sure-fire way that they will not be scammed, but there are things they should be aware of,” said Modic. “StP-II doesn’t just measure how likely you are to fall for scams, it’s how likely you are to change your behaviour.”

Ross Anderson’s blog on the paper can be found at: https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2018/03/16/we-will-make-you-like-our-research/.

Reference:
David Modic, Ross Anderson and Jussi Palomäki. ‘We will make you like our research: ̽��ֱ��development of a susceptibility-to-persuasion scale.’ PLOS ONE (2018). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0194119

Researchers have developed an online questionnaire which measures a range of personality traits to identify individuals who are more likely to fall victim to internet scams and other forms of cybercrime.

Scams have been around for hundreds of years, and over the centuries, they haven’t really changed that much – the only difference now is with the internet, it requires a lot less effort to do it.

David Modic

Photo by Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

How to read a digital footprint

fpjl2 — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 08:00:53 +0000

In 2007, Dr David Stillwell built an application for an online networking site that was starting to explode: Facebook. His app, myPersonality, allowed users to complete a range of psychometric tests, get feedback on their scores and share it with friends. It went viral.

By 2012, more than six million people had completed the test, with many users allowing researchers access to their profile data. This huge database of psychological scores and social media information, including status updates, friendship networks and ‘Likes’, is the largest of its kind in existence. It contains the moods, musings and characteristics of millions – a holy grail of psychological data unthinkable until a few years ago.

Stillwell and colleagues at Cambridge’s Psychometrics Centre provided open access to the database for other academics. Academic researchers from over 100 institutions globally now use it, producing 39 journal articles since 2011.

Meanwhile, the Cambridge Psychometrics team devised their own complex algorithms to read patterns in the data. Resulting publications caused media scrums, with a paper published in early 2015 generating nervous headlines around the world about computers knowing your personality better than your parents.

But how surprising is this really, given the amount we casually share about ourselves online every day? And not just through social media, but also through web browsing, internet purchases, and so on. Every interaction creates a trace, which all add up to a ‘digital footprint’ of who we are, what we do and how we feel.

We know that, behind closed doors, corporations and governments use this data to ‘target’ us – our online actions mark us out as future customers, or even possible terrorists – and, for many, this reduction in privacy is a disturbing fact of 21st-century life.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge researchers believe that the new era of psychological ‘big data’ can be used to improve commercial and government services as well as furthering scientific research, but openness is essential.

“If you ask a company to make their data available for research, usually it will go to some corporate responsibility office which deems it too risky – there’s nothing in it for them. Whereas if you tell them you can improve their business, but as part of that they make some data available to the research community, you find a lot more open doors,” says Stillwell, who co-directs the Centre.

Around half of the Centre’s current work involves commercial companies, who come to them for “statistical expertise combined with psychological understanding” – often in an attempt to improve online marketing, an area still in its infancy.

̽��ֱ��team has recently launched an interface called Apply Magic Sauce, based on the myPersonality results, which can be used as a marketing and research tool that turns digital ‘footprints’ into psycho-demographic profiles.

“If you use the internet you will be targeted by advertisers, but at the moment that targeting happens in the shadows and isn’t particularly accurate,” says Vesselin Popov, the Centre’s development strategist.

“We all have to suffer advertising, so perhaps it’s better to be recommended products that we might actually want? Using opt-in anonymous personality profiling based on digital records such as Facebook Likes or Last.fm scores could vastly improve targeted advertising and allow users to set the level of data-sharing they are comfortable with,” says Popov. “This data could then, with the permission of users, be used to enrich scientific research databases.”

Measuring psychological traits has long been difficult for researchers and boring for participants, usually involving laborious questionnaires. This will sound familiar to anyone who has used an employment agency or job centre. ̽��ֱ��team are now building on their previous work with algorithms to take psychometric testing even further into uncharted territory – video games. Job centres might be the first to benefit.

“A job centre gets about seven minutes with each job seeker every two weeks, so providing personalised support in that time is challenging,” explains Stillwell. “We are working with a company to build a game that measures a person’s strengths in a ‘gamified’ way that’s engaging but still accurate.”

In ‘JobCity’, currently an iPad proof of concept, users explore job opportunities in a simulated city. ̽��ֱ��game measures psychological strengths and weaknesses along the way, offering career suggestions at the end, and providing the job centre with feedback to help them guide the applicant. ̽��ֱ��team has tested the game with a group of under-25s and the results are promising.

For the Centre’s Director Professor John Rust, the team’s background in psychology means they don’t lose sight of the people within the oceans of data: “We’re dealing with organisations that are using ‘big data’ to make actuarial decisions about who gets lent money, who gets a job – you don’t want this left solely to computer engineers who just see statistics.”

“We want machines that can recognise you as a person. Much of the information for doing that already exists in the servers of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and so on. Your searches and statuses are all reflections of questions, experiences and emotions you have: all psychometric data. It’s the basis for a future where computers can truly interact with human beings.”

Cyberspace has, for Rust, opened a ‘Pandora’s box’ that’s taken psychological testing to a new level. But, he says, the current explosion in big data bears comparison to a previous shift that happened a century ago – the advent of IQ tests shortly before the First World War. Millions of servicemen were tested to determine role allocation within the military. Suddenly, says Rust, overexcited scientists had massive psychological datasets. IQ tests influenced societies long after the war, leading he says to some of the most shameful episodes of the 20th century including scientific racism and sterilisation of the ‘feebleminded’.

“Today you have another psychological big data situation being used to challenge a perceived global threat: terrorism. Government data scientists hunting would-be terrorists are enthusiastically adopting big data, but there will be social consequences again. In many ways, we already have Big Brother – whatever that now means,” Rust says.

“ ̽��ֱ��new psychological data revolution needs serious research, and ethical debates about it need to be happening in the public arena – and they’re not. We have a responsibility to say to people working on this in secret in companies and institutions: ‘You’ve got to come and discuss this in an open place’. It’s what universities are for.”

Inset images: Facebook's Infection (Ksayer1); Dr David Stillwell, Professor John Rust and Vesselin Popov ( ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge).

Researchers are using social media data to build a picture of the personalities of millions, changing core ideas of how psychological profiling works. They say it could revolutionise employment and commerce, but the work must be done transparently.

Your searches and statuses are all reflections of questions, experiences and emotions you have: all psychometric data. It’s the basis for a future where computers can truly interact with human beings

John Rust

malavoda

Footprints

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Computers using digital footprints are better judges of personality than friends and family

fpjl2 — Mon, 12 Jan 2015 20:05:04 +0000

A new study, published today in the journal PNAS, compares the ability of computers and people to make accurate judgments about our personalities. People's judgments were based on their familiarity with the judged individual, while computer models used a specific digital signal: Facebook Likes.

̽��ֱ��results show that by mining Facebook Likes, the computer model was able to predict a person's personality more accurately than most of their friends and family. Given enough Likes to analyse, only a person's spouse rivalled the computer for accuracy of broad psychological traits.

Researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Stanford ̽��ֱ�� describe the finding as an "emphatic demonstration" of the capacity of computers to discover an individual's psychological traits through pure data analysis, showing machines can know us better than we'd previously thought: an "important milestone" on the path towards more social human-computer interactions.

"In the future, computers could be able to infer our psychological traits and react accordingly, leading to the emergence of emotionally-intelligent and socially skilled machines," said lead author Wu Youyou, from Cambridge's Psychometrics Centre.

"In this context, the human-computer interactions depicted in science fiction films such as Her seem to be within our reach."

̽��ֱ��researchers say these results might raise concerns over privacy as such technology develops; the research team support policies giving users full control of their digital footprint.

In the study, a computer could more accurately predict the subject's personality than a work colleague by analysing just ten Likes; more than a friend or a cohabitant (roommate) with 70, a family member (parent, sibling) with 150, and a spouse with 300 Likes.

Given that an average Facebook user has about 227 Likes (and this number is growing steadily), the researchers say that this kind of AI has the potential to know us better than our closest companions.

̽��ֱ��latest results build on previous work from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, published in March 2013, which showed that a variety of psychological and demographic characteristics could be predicted with startling accuracy through Facebook Likes.

In the new study, researchers used a sample of 86,220 volunteers on Facebook who completed a 100-item personality questionnaire through the 'myPersonality' app, as well as providing access to their Likes.

These results provided self-reported personality scores for what are known in psychological practice as the 'big five' traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism— the OCEAN model. Through this, researchers could establish which Likes equated with higher levels of particular traits e.g. liking 'Salvador Dali' or 'meditation' showed a high degree of openness.

Users of the 'myPersonality' app were then given the option of inviting friends and family to judge the psychological traits of the user through a shorter version of the personality test. These were the human judges in the study—those listed on Facebook as friends or family expressing their judgement of a subject's personality using a 10-item questionnaire

Researchers were able to get a sample of 17,622 participants judged by one friend or family member, and a sample of 14,410 judged by two.

To gauge the accuracy of these measurements, the online personality judgements were corroborated with a meta-analysis of previous psychological studies over decades which looked at how people's colleagues, family and so on judge their personality. Researchers found their online values similar to the averages from years of person-to-person research.

In this way, the researchers were able to come up with accuracy comparisons between computer algorithms and the personality judgements made by humans. Given enough Likes, the computers came closer to a person's self-reported personality than their brothers, mothers or partners.

Dr Michal Kosinski, co-author and researcher at Stanford, says machines have a couple of key advantages that make these results possible: the ability to retain and access vast quantities of information, and the ability to analyse it with algorithms the techniques of 'Big Data'.

"Big Data and machine-learning provide accuracy that the human mind has a hard time achieving, as humans tend to give too much weight to one or two examples, or lapse into non-rational ways of thinking," he said. Nevertheless, the authors concede that detection of some traits might be best left to human abilities, those without digital footprints or dependant on subtle cognition.

̽��ֱ��authors of the study write that automated, accurate, and cheap personality assessments could improve societal and personal decision-making in many ways—from recruitment to romance.

" ̽��ֱ��ability to judge personality is an essential component of social living— from day-to-day decisions to long-term plans such as whom to marry, trust, hire, or elect as president," said Cambridge co-author Dr David Stillwell. " ̽��ֱ��results of such data analysis can be very useful in aiding people when making decisions."

Youyou explains: "Recruiters could better match candidates with jobs based on their personality; products and services could adjust their behaviour to best match their users' characters and changing moods.

"People may choose to augment their own intuitions and judgments with this kind of data analysis when making important life decisions such as choosing activities, career paths, or even romantic partners. Such data-driven decisions may well improve people's lives," she said.

̽��ֱ��researchers say that this kind of data mining and its inferences has hallmarks of techniques currently used by some digital service providers, and that—for many people— a future in which machines read our habits as an open book on a massive scale may seem dystopian to those concerned with privacy.

It's a concern shared by the researchers. "We hope that consumers, technology developers, and policy-makers will tackle those challenges by supporting privacy-protecting laws and technologies, and giving the users full control over their digital footprints," said Kosinski.

Take the Facebook personality test yourself here: applymagicsauce.com

Researchers have found that, based on enough Facebook Likes, computers can judge your personality traits better than your friends, family and even your partner. Using a new algorithm, researchers have calculated the average number of Likes artificial intelligence (AI) needs to draw personality inferences about you as accurately as your partner or parents.

People may choose to augment their own intuitions and judgments with this kind of data analysis when making important life decisions

Wu Youyou

Ksayer1

Facebook's Infection

Some example personality traits and associated Likes

Liberal & artistic	Shy & reserved	Cooperative	Calm & relaxed
TED	J-pop	Life of Pi	Ferrari
John Coltrane	Minecraft	the Bible	Volunteering
̽��ֱ��Daily Show	Wikipedia	smiling	Usain Bolt
Atheism	̽��ֱ��X-Files	Bourne Identity	Kayaking

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Digital records could expose intimate details and personality traits of millions

fpjl2 — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:49:49 +0000

New research, published today in the journal PNAS, shows that surprisingly accurate estimates of Facebook users’ race, age, IQ, sexuality, personality, substance use and political views can be inferred from automated analysis of only their Facebook Likes - information currently publicly available by default.

In the study, researchers describe Facebook Likes as a “generic class” of digital record - similar to web search queries and browsing histories - and suggest that such techniques could be used to extract sensitive information for almost anyone regularly online.

Researchers at Cambridge’s Psychometrics Centre, in collaboration with Microsoft Research Cambridge, analysed a dataset of over 58,000 US Facebook users, who volunteered their Likes, demographic profiles and psychometric testing results through the myPersonality application.

Users opted in to provide data and gave consent to have profile information recorded for analysis. Facebook Likes were fed into algorithms and corroborated with information from profiles and personality tests.

Researchers created statistical models able to predict personal details using Facebook Likes alone. Models proved 88% accurate for determining male sexuality, 95% accurate distinguishing African-American from Caucasian American and 85% accurate differentiating Republican from Democrat. Christians and Muslims were correctly classified in 82% of cases, and good prediction accuracy was achieved for relationship status and substance abuse – between 65 and 73%.

But few users clicked Likes explicitly revealing these attributes. For example, less that 5% of gay users clicked obvious Likes such as Gay Marriage. Accurate predictions relied on ‘inference’ - aggregating huge amounts of less informative but more popular Likes such as music and TV shows to produce incisive personal profiles.

Even seemingly opaque personal details such as whether users’ parents separated before the user reached the age of 21 were accurate to 60%, enough to make the information “worthwhile for advertisers”, suggest the researchers.

While they highlight the potential for personalised marketing to improve online services using predictive models, the researchers also warn of the threats posed to users’ privacy. They argue that many online consumers might feel such levels of digital exposure exceed acceptable limits - as corporations, governments, and even individuals could use predictive software to accurately infer highly sensitive information from Facebook Likes and other digital ‘traces’.

̽��ֱ��researchers also tested for personality traits including intelligence, emotional stability, openness and extraversion. While such latent traits are far more difficult to gauge, the accuracy of the analysis was striking. Study of the openness trait – the spectrum of those who dislike change to those who welcome it – revealed that observation of Likes alone is roughly as informative as using an individual’s actual personality test score.

Some Likes had a strong but seemingly incongruous or random link with a personal attribute, such as Curly Fries with high IQ, or That Spider is More Scared Than U Are with non-smokers.

When taken as a whole, researchers believe that the varying estimations of personal attributes and personality traits gleaned from Facebook Like analysis alone can form surprisingly accurate personal portraits of potentially millions of users worldwide.

They say the results suggest a possible revolution in psychological assessment which – based on this research – could be carried out on an unprecedented scale without costly assessment centres and questionnaires.

“We believe that our results, while based on Facebook Likes, apply to a wider range of online behaviours.” said Michal Kosinski, Operations Director at the Psychometric Centre, who conducted the research with his Cambridge colleague David Stillwell and Thore Graepel from Microsoft Research.

“Similar predictions could be made from all manner of digital data, with this kind of secondary ‘inference’ made with remarkable accuracy - statistically predicting sensitive information people might not want revealed. Given the variety of digital traces people leave behind, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for individuals to control.

“I am a great fan and active user of new amazing technologies, including Facebook. I appreciate automated book recommendations, or Facebook selecting the most relevant stories for my newsfeed,” said Kosinski. “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.”

“Just the possibility of this happening could deter people from using digital technologies and diminish trust between individuals and institutions – hampering technological and economic progress. Users need to be provided with transparency and control over their information.”

Thore Graepel from Microsoft Research said he hoped the research would contribute to the on-going discussions about user privacy: “Consumers rightly expect strong privacy protection to be built into the products and services they use and this research may well serve as a reminder for consumers to take a careful approach to sharing information online, utilising privacy controls and never sharing content with unfamiliar parties.”

David Stillwell from Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� added: “I have used Facebook since 2005, and I will continue to do so. But I might be more careful to use the privacy settings that Facebook provides.”

For more information, please contact fred.lewsey@admin.cam.ac.uk

Research shows that intimate personal attributes can be predicted with high levels of accuracy from ‘traces’ left by seemingly innocuous digital behaviour, in this case Facebook Likes. ̽��ֱ��study raises important questions about personalised marketing and online privacy.

Similar predictions could be made from all manner of digital data, with this kind of secondary ‘inference’ made with remarkable accuracy

Michal Kosinski

Cambridge Psychometrics Centre

Graphic from mypersonality app

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̽��ֱ��new geography of personality

bjb42 — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��study of personality can be traced back over two millennia but it wasn’t until the early 1990s that an empirically derived framework for studying personality became widely accepted in the scientific community. Decades of research involving hundreds of thousands of individuals revealed five broad dimensions of personality. These so-called Big Five dimensions – Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism and Intellect – provided a basic model for conceptualising and measuring personality.

We know a fair amount about the antecedents and consequences of the five dimensions. Evidence from studies of identical twins suggests that the Big Five have a substantial genetic basis. There is evidence that the dimensions exist in different parts of the world. And numerous studies have shown that differences between individuals are associated with important life outcomes, from academic and occupational success, to marital stability and physical health.

One question that we know less about concerns the geographic distribution of personality. Are the Big Five personality dimensions evenly distributed across the globe, or are they geographically clustered? National and regional stereotypes would have us think that there are important geographic personality differences. But do such stereotypes have any basis in reality?

Mapping personality

Ongoing research by Dr Jason Rentfrow, at the Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, and Dr Sam Gosling, at the ̽��ֱ�� of Texas, aims to examine geographic variation in personality. In a large-scale project partially funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), data collected by online survey from over three-quarters of a million individuals in the USA revealed that personalities are not randomly distributed but are clustered into distinct geographic patterns.

It seems that residents of the Mid-Atlantic and New England states are relatively stressed, irritable and depressed, whereas West Coast residents are more emotionally stable, relaxed and calm than the rest of the country. ̽��ֱ��two coasts are quite similar on other traits, though. Traits associated with intellect, such as creativity, imagination, and openness, are higher in the Northeast and West Coast than in the Central and Southern states, where people are more pragmatic, straightforward and traditional. Compared with the rest of the country, residents of the Central and Southern states are also more neighbourly, friendly and generous.

One particularly important discovery is that the prevalence of certain personality traits is associated with a range of important geographic indicators. In states where rates of neuroticism are high, life expectancies are short and rates of cancer, heart disease, stroke and diabetes are high. In such places, residents are also less socially connected than in regions where people are more emotionally stable. In regions where intellect is high, more patents are produced per capita and more people work in the arts, technology and R&D than in places where intellect is low. ̽��ֱ��prevalence of traits associated with agreeableness, such as warmth, generosity and friendliness, is linked to lower crime rates – people are more trusting in safe places.

Do birds of a feather flock together?

One explanation for the geographic clustering of personality traits is selective migration – the idea that people choose to live in places that meet their needs. Concerns about safety, job opportunities and the quality of schools factor into some people’s decisions about where to live. So it’s reasonable to expect that aspects of personality also filter into the decision. Consider, for instance, the finding that large cosmopolitan cities have disproportionately large numbers of people who are open, creative and intellectual. It’s likely that such people migrate to cosmopolitan cities precisely because those cities afford a multiplicity of choices with which to satisfy their needs for stimulation and diversity.

Another explanation is social influence. There’s a wealth of empirical evidence that attitudes, opinions and emotions are contagious. So it is conceivable that the clustering of neuroticism, for instance, is a result of emotional contagion. In places with disproportionately large numbers of people who are anxious, irritable and tense, others ‘catch’ some of that negative affect simply through regular contact.

A third explanation is environmental influence. As in the case of social influence, features of the physical environment could affect the personalities of individuals within a given region. Climate, for instance, has a significant effect on the types of activities in which people within a region can engage. In warm climates people spend more time outside and have more contact with larger varieties of people than those in colder climates. Research on seasonal affective disorder indicates that in regions that receive little direct sunlight during certain parts of the year residents are prone to depression and anxiety. Aspects of a region’s physical environment might not only shape the psychological characteristics of the residents, but might also provide incentives for settling or migrating.

Magnet or melting pot?

Understanding regional personality differences can inform our knowledge of what makes regional development tick – why it is that some regions prosper while others struggle. Social scientists have argued that technology, human capital and community are essential ingredients for economic and social prosperity. But it now appears that we have another set of useful ingredients with which to work. It will be informative to examine how the Big Five are distributed in other countries and whether the processes connecting traits and geographic indicators are similar.

Personality captures an individual’s behavioural tendencies, emotionality and capacity to acquire new information. It has been shown to predict important life outcomes, such as occupational success, longevity and social connectedness. So it’s not too far fetched for the aggregate personalities of thousands of individuals to play a significant role on a geographic scale. Indeed, it makes sense that more innovation and discovery occurs in places with high concentrations of intellectual people because pushing knowledge to the limit requires curiosity and imagination. It also makes sense that rates of disease and mortality are lower in places where people are emotionally stable because psychological health is a key determinant of physical health. But which came first?

This research, like most, raises more questions than it answers. Are regions like magnets, attracting certain people and repelling others? Or, are they like melting pots, infusing the beliefs, values and customs of their inhabitants? We don’t yet know the answers to these questions, but the new geography of personality provides a map that may direct us to the answers.

For more information, please contact Dr Jason Rentfrow (pjr39@cam.ac.uk) at the Department of Social and Developmental Psychology. Dr Rentfrow is also a member of the ̽��ֱ��’s Psychometrics Centre.

Jason Rentfrow explains how analysis of over three-quarters of a million online surveys has been used to build a "map" of the USA.

As in the case of social influence, features of the physical environment could affect the personalities of individuals within a given region. Climate, for instance, has a significant effect on the types of activities in which people within a region can engage.

Dr Kevin Stolarick and Paulo Raposo, ̽��ֱ�� of Toronto

personality