The "like" button, Facebook's most popular feature to date, was unveiled in 2009 and has since then become somewhat of a social media metric. The more likes you have, the more you feel validated by your posting; the shallow truth many Facebook-ers put ahead of real-life goals and admiration. Not the healthiest of habits. But with these metrics in mind, one thing is certain―your computer probably knows you better than even your closest friends.
A recent study published in the journal PNAS earlier this week, delved into how our "digital footprints" give our computers the upper-edge in understanding the person behind the screen. And what it found was that digital footprints, like a "like" or a share, may reveal more about the person than even what their closest friends would know.
"This study compares the accuracy of personality judgment―a ubiquitous and important social-cognitive activity―between computer models and humans" lead authors of the study Wu Youyou and Michal Kosinsky say. "Using several criteria, we show that computers' judgments of people's personalities based on their digital footprints are more accurate and valid than judgments made by their close others or acquaintances (friends, family, spouse, colleagues, etc.). Our findings highlight that people's personalities can be predicted automatically and without involving human social-cognitive skills."
In his preliminary research, Kosinski found that our "Facebook Likes" can be assimilated to form omewhat of a digital portrait of ourselves, providing our social media friends and followers with windows into our lives.
"OK, this is really cool that [Facebook likes] can predict all of those things, but how does it compare with how humans can predict?" In other words, he says, how impressive is it that the computer can make such accurate predictions," said Kosinski when he was asked what the most common question was regarding the research.
It was even later graphed that with just an average of 10 likes, a computer knew more than a co-worker and, after over 175 likes, odds were strong that the autonomous computer was more likely to know about your more personal attributes than your closest family members.
But computers seem to be the most open minded of subjects―they neither "like" nor "dislike."
"Computers don't care if you're a man, woman, old, young, black, or white," Kosinski says. "This gives us a cheap, massive, fake-proof algorithm to judge the personality of millions of people at once."
So even in spite of not being able to process simple human emotions, perhaps computers can teach us a thing or two about compassion after all.