Patrick Tucker describes an interesting study out of MIT about how metadata may be used to identify personality type:
The researchers, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, Jordi Quoidbach, Florent Robic and Sandy Pentland, had 100 students fill out surveys to determine their personality along five distinct personality types:
- Neurotic: Defined roughly as a higher than normal tendency to experience unpleasant emotions
- Open: Defined as broadly curious and creative
- Extroverted: As in, looks toward others for stimulation
- Agreeable: As in warm, compassionate, and cooperative
- Conscientiousness: Self-disciplined organized and eager for success
These types are in keeping with the so-called Five Factor Model of Personality, a widely used method for describing personality traits. Once the researchers had the survey data to show how each of the subjects fell along the spectrum, they examined the subjects’ phone records between March 2010 and June 2011, well within the new 18-month window. Specifically they looked at these metadata elements:
- Basic phone use including the number of calls
- Active user behaviors, as in the number of calls initiated, and the time it took the subject to answer a text
- Location, or how far the subject moved, the number of places from which calls have been made, and other indicators of so-called radius of gyration
- Regularity of calling routine
- Diversity, defined as the ratio between the subject’s total number of contacts and the relative frequency at which he or she interacts with them
Read more on DefenseOne.
Thanks to Joe Cadillic for this link.