fei75766_ch13_408-434.indd 427  02/06/20 01:05 PM
Chapter 13    McCrae and Costa’s Five-Factor Trait Theory427
Measuring the Big Five with Our Digital Footprints
Fewinventions havechanged human culture more thantheInternet. More recently, 
thepartoftheInternet thathasprofoundly changed howpeople interact, communi -
cate,think, andbehave issocial media, particularly Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, 
andSnapchat. More generally, social media dataarepartofwhat isknown as“big
data,” andthiskindofresearch isonlygrowing inscope andimportance inthesocial 
sciences, including inpersonality theory andresearch (Azucar, Marengo, &Settanni, 
2018; Bleidorn, Hopwood, &Wright, 2017). Theso-called “digital footprint” weleave 
behind onthese social media sitesincludes ourlikes, views, musical preferences, 
shares, tweets, etc.Personality psychologists haverecently begun toask:How well
doesourdigital footprint reflect andmatch ourpersonality traits? 
Onewaytoanswer thisquestion istofirstdetermine whether ourdigital 
footprint predicts ourpersonality traits. Theanswer isyes.Forexample, totake
justtwoFacebook “like” examples: liking thepop-star Nicki Minaj wasassoci -
atedwithbeing inthe90th percentile (highest 10%) inExtraversion andliking 
theconservative politician MittRomney wasassociated withbeing inthe92nd 
percentile inConscientiousness (Kosinski, Stillwell, &Graepel, 2013). Addition -
ally,inameta-analysis of14separate studies examining therelationship between 
digital footprint andeach oftheBigFivepersonality traits, Azucar andcolleagues 
(2018) found thatdigital footprint predicted each oftheBigFivetraits atmoder -
ately highlevels: Openness (0.39), Conscientiousness (0.35), Extraversion (0.40), 
Agreeableness (0.29), andNeuroticism (0.33). Thissuggests thatresearch asa
whole consistently finds thathowweusesocial media isareflection ofourunique 
personality traits. 
What ismost remarkable iscurrent research alsosuggests thatoursocial 
media footprint isnotonlyanadequate measure ofpersonality, butinfactitmay
insome ways beeven better thantraditional measures likehuman-completed ques-
tionnaires (Ivcevic &Ambady, 2012; Kosinski etal.,2013; Ortigosa, Carro, &
Quiroga, 2014; Whitty, Doodson, Creese, &Hodges, 2017; Youyou, Kosinski, 
&Stillwell, 2015). Forexample, asreported inHinds andJoinson (2019), two
separate large-scale meta-analyses found thatcomputer-based (digital footprints) 
judgments ofpersonality outperform human judgements, andthisisespecially the
casewithNeuroticism andOpenness (seeFigure 13.5) .That is,digital footprint 
records were more accurate thanratings byfriends, family, andcolleagues—with 
accuracy being calculated asthecorrelation between observers ordigital footprint 
withself-ratings ofpersonality. 
Similarly, Youyou andcolleagues (2015) assessed theaccuracy ofperson -
alityratings made bywork colleagues, friends, family members, andspouses of
more than10,000 people. They compared these human generated personality rat-
ingstothose made bydigital media footprints (inthiscase, simply theprofile of
Facebook “likes” aperson made). Themeasure ofaccuracy wastheratings made 
bytheperson him-orherself onthesame personality traits. Thequestion sim-
plyis:Arehuman orcomputer-generated personality ratings more predictive of
self-ratings ofpersonality? Work colleagues hadthelowest accuracy oragreement 
withself-ratings (r =0.27), followed byfriends (r =0.45), family (r =0.50), and
spouses (r =0.58). Theaverage computer rating washigher thanallbutspouse Final PDF to printer