Your Facebook Likes may reveal more than you probably like
Facebook users' Likes on the social network may be unintentionally revealing more about their private personality traits, including sexual orientation and intelligence, according to a new study.
By studying the Likes of 58,000 Facebook users on the social network, researchers at the University of Cambridge say they were able to determine users' IQ, gender, sexual orientation, and political and religious beliefs, and even substance use, with an accuracy rate of more than 80 percent
Users' expressions of approval on the social network for things such as photos, friends' status updates, as well as pages for sports, musicians, and books were analyzed by researchers employing a model that reduced the number of random variables under consideration. When compared with user-provided demographic profiles and other psychometric tests, researchers learned they had correctly predicted sexual preference 88 percent of the time, ethnicity 95 percent of the time, and political leanings in 85 percent of the cases.
