15 July 2010

This was kind of neat

Prick us do we not bleed!

Bloggers are apparently people too for all their lack of humors as broadcast through a digital medium.

"More neurotic bloggers used more words associated with negative emotions; extravert bloggers used more words pertaining to positive emotions; high scorers on agreeableness avoided swear words and used more words related to communality; and conscientious bloggers mentioned more words with achievement connotations. These were all as expected. More of a surprise was the lack of a link between the Big Five personality factor of 'openness to experience' and word categories related to intellectual or sensory experience. Instead openness was associated with more use of prepositions, more formal language and longer words.

The sheer size of the data set at Yarkoni's disposal allowed him to look not only at links between personality factors and broad word categories (as past research has done) but to also zoom in on the usage of specific words. Among the most strong and intriguing correlations were: Neuroticism correlated with use of 'irony' and negatively correlated with 'invited'; Extraversion correlated with 'drinks' and negatively correlated with 'computer'; Openness correlated with 'ink'; Agreeableness with 'wonderful' and negatively correlated with 'porn'; and Conscientiousness correlated with 'completed' and negatively correlated with 'boring'."

For some basis of comparison
I typically score(d) on the "big five" test:
Around 80 on openness (roughly the same percentile score)
Around 60 on conscientiousness. (lower half)
Around 20 on extraversion. (roughly the bottom 2 percentile)
Around 30 on agreeableness. (bottom 5 percentile)
Around 35 on neuroticism. (about average, a little below).

I don't sadly use the word "ink" very often. But "porn" has been used on here many times along with some other choice four letters when needed. And "boring". "Drinks" has not been used very often at all.

In general, I write the way I think and to some extent act in public settings, so it should surprise no one if they meet me that I have random sometimes disagreeable or unpopular opinions and no compunction about expressing them openly and argumentatively with others. But also almost zero interest in engaging the average random passerby with such debates.

I also am sort of curious why its a big surprise that "openness to experience" correlated so poorly with word categories like "thinking" or "sensory experiences". I should think that people who have a blog in the first place would use such things generally liberally enough that it would be noise statistically. What you're really looking for I should think to distinguish such things is somebody who has enough openness to have careful expressions that they want other people to take with some seriousness (even the sillier ones are crafted) and who uses writing and blogging both as an art and as a form of communication.

2 comments:

Andrew Clunn said...

I want to be more neurotic! Fuck that bitchy, evil, bad, hateful-mean, nasty rutabaga!

Sun Tzu said...

Neuroticism is usually manifested in a little different form than psychotic rage.....