ABSTRACT
People join online social networks for many different reasons. Techniques that can provide accurate and reliable online person profiling based on social network site disclosures have great appeal for agencies that seek to manipulate people in terms of their consumer purchases or election voting choices. An online survey was set up on Facebook that required participants to complete a battery of questionnaires including an instrument designed to measure the “Big Five” personality factors–Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Neuroticism and Openness to Experience. One key end-goal is to develop a suite of analytical tools including the ability to use natural language outputs from people to classify them by their linguistic style and to predict their probable personality traits. The only personality variable that emerged as a significant predictor of friendship ties was Extraversion. There were three personality dimensions that emerged as especially important in the context–Agreeableness, Extraversion and Openness to Experience.
