Michal Kosinski
Biographic Data
| ID | 157160 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michal Kosinski |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michal |
| FAMILY NAME | Kosinski |
| SIGNATURE | KOSINSKI M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stanford University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2936-4775 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 105 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Political Attitudes and Disease Threat: Regional Pathogen Stress Is Associated With Conservative Ideology Only for Older Individuals
What environmental factors are associated with individual differences in political ideology, and do such associations change over time? We examine whether reductions in pathogen prevalence in U.S. states over the past 60 years are associated with reduced associations between parasite stress and conservatism. We report a positive association between infection levels and conservative ideology in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. However…
Supplemental Material for Facial Recognition Technology and Human Raters Can Predict Political Orientation From Images of Expressionless Faces Even When Controlling for Demographics and Self-Presentat…
Facial recognition technology and human raters can predict political orientation from images of expressionless faces even when controlling for demographics and self-presentation
Carefully standardized facial images of 591 participants were taken in the laboratory while controlling for self-presentation, facial expression, head orientation, and image properties. They were presented to human raters and a facial recognition algorithm: both humans (r = .21) and the algorithm ( r = .22) could predict participants' scores on a political orientation scale (Cronbach's α = .94) decorrelated with age, gender, and ethnicity. These …
Regional personality assessment through social media language
OBJECTIVE: We explore the personality of counties as assessed through linguistic patterns on social media. Such studies were previously limited by the cost and feasibility of large-scale surveys; however, language-based computational models applied to large social media datasets now allow for large-scale personality assessment. METHOD: We applied a language-based assessment of the five factor model of personality to 6,064,267 U.S. Twitter users. …
Modern Psychometrics: The Science of Psychological Assessment
The Language of Religious Affiliation: Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Differences
Religious affiliation is an important identifying characteristic for many individuals and relates to numerous life outcomes including health, well-being, policy positions, and cognitive style. Using methods from computational linguistics, we examined language from 12,815 Facebook users in the United States and United Kingdom who indicated their religious affiliation. Religious individuals used more positive emotion words ( β = .278, p
One Size Fits All: Context Collapse, Self-Presentation Strategies and Language Styles on Facebook
This study empirically examines context collapse on Facebook by examining audience influences on content and language in self-disclosures. Context collapse is the process of disparate audiences being conjoined into one. Using a public longitudinal behavioral data set of 6,378 Facebook users, the study found that the size and heterogeneity of people's networks were positively associated with the number of text status updates they posted, but negat…
Deep neural networks are more accurate than humans at detecting sexual orientation from facial images
We show that faces contain much more information about sexual orientation than can be perceived or interpreted by the human brain. We used deep neural networks to extract features from 35,326 facial images. These features were entered into a logistic regression aimed at classifying sexual orientation. Given a single facial image, a classifier could correctly distinguish between gay and heterosexual men in 81% of cases, and in 71% of cases for wom…
In your eyes only? Discrepancies and agreement between self- and other-reports of personality from age 14 to 29
Do others perceive the personality changes that take place between the ages of 14 and 29 in a similar fashion as the aging person him- or herself? This cross-sectional study analyzed age trajectories in self- versus other-reported Big Five personality traits and in self-other agreement in a sample of more than 10,000 individuals from the myPersonality Project. Results for self-reported personality showed maturation effects (increases in extravers…
Psychological targeting as an effective approach to digital mass persuasion
Significance Building on recent advancements in the assessment of psychological traits from digital footprints, this paper demonstrates the effectiveness of psychological mass persuasion—that is, the adaptation of persuasive appeals to the psychological characteristics of large groups of individuals with the goal of influencing their behavior. On the one hand, this form of psychological mass persuasion could be used to help people make better dec…
Frankly, We Do Give a Damn: The Relationship Between Profanity and Honesty
There are two conflicting perspectives regarding the relationship between profanity and dishonesty. These two forms of norm-violating behavior share common causes and are often considered to be positively related. On the other hand, however, profanity is often used to express one’s genuine feelings and could therefore be negatively related to dishonesty. In three studies, we explored the relationship between profanity and honesty. We examined pro…
Age trends in musical preferences in adulthood: 1. Conceptualization and empirical investigation
This article aims to fill some gaps in theory and research on age trends in musical preferences in adulthood by presenting a conceptual model that describes three classes of determinants that can affect those trends. The Music Preferences in Adulthood Model (MPAM) posits that some psychological determinants that are extrinsic to the music (individual differences and social influences), and some that are intrinsic to the music (the perceived inner…
Living in the Past, Present, and Future: Measuring Temporal Orientation With Language
Temporal orientation refers to individual differences in the relative emphasis one places on the past, present, or future, and it is related to academic, financial, and health outcomes. We propose and evaluate a method for automatically measuring temporal orientation through language expressed on social media. Judges rated the temporal orientation of 4,302 social media messages. We trained a classifier based on these ratings, which could accurate…
The Song Is You: Preferences for Musical Attribute Dimensions Reflect Personality
Research suggests that musical preferences are linked to personality, but this research has been hindered by genre-based theories and methods. We address this limitation using a novel method based on the actual attributes that people perceive from music. In Study 1, using 102 musical pieces representing 26 genres and subgenres, we show that 38 perceived attributes in music can be organized into three basic dimensions: arousal, valence, and depth.…
Effects of Geum urbanum L. root extracts and its constituents on polymorphonuclear leucocytes functions. Significance in periodontal diseases
Self‐Monitoring and the Metatraits
Prior attempts at locating self‐monitoring within general taxonomies of personality traits have largely proved unsuccessful. However, past research has typically neglected (a) the bidimensionality of the Self‐Monitoring Scale and (b) the hierarchical nature of personality. The objective of this study was to test hypotheses that the two self‐monitoring factors are located at the level of the metatraits. Using data from two large multi‐informant sa…
Computer-based personality judgments are more accurate than those made by humans
Significance This study compares the accuracy of personality judgment—a ubiquitous and important social-cognitive activity—between computer models and humans. 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 pers…
Facebook as a research tool for the social sciences: Opportunities, challenges, ethical considerations, and practical guidelines
Facebook is rapidly gaining recognition as a powerful research tool for the social sciences. It constitutes a large and diverse pool of participants, who can be selectively recruited for both online and offline studies. Additionally, it facilitates data collection by storing detailed records of its users' demographic profiles, social interactions, and behaviors. With participants' consent, these data can be recorded retrospectively in a convenien…
Automatic personality assessment through social media language
Language use is a psychologically rich, stable individual difference with well-established correlations to personality. We describe a method for assessing personality using an open-vocabulary analysis of language from social media. We compiled the written language from 66,732 Facebook users and their questionnaire-based self-reported Big Five personality traits, and then we built a predictive model of personality based on their language. We used …
When a New Tool Is Introduced in Different Cultural Contexts: Individualism-Collectivism and Social Network on Facebook
What will happen if a new tool is introduced to different cultures? What if the tool can potentially bridge those cultures? Will it be used in the same way across cultures and contribute to a decrease in cultural differences? Or will it be used in culturally appropriate ways and eventually integrated into preexisting cultural practices? To answer these questions, we predicted and examined cultural differences in the use of Facebook focusing on so…
Who Can Wait for the Future? A Personality Perspective
Who can wait for larger, delayed rewards rather than smaller, immediate ones? Delay discounting (DD) measures the rate at which subjective value of an outcome decreases as the length of time to obtaining it increases. Previous work has shown that greater DD predicts negative academic, social, and health outcomes. Yet, little is known about who is likely to engage in greater or less DD. Taking a personality perspective, in a large sample ( N = 5,8…
Participant recruitment and data collection through Facebook: The role of personality factors
As participant recruitment and data collection over the Internet have become more common, numerous observers have expressed concern regarding the validity of research conducted in this fashion. One growing method of conducting research over the Internet involves recruiting participants and administering questionnaires over Facebook, the world’s largest social networking service. If Facebook is to be considered a viable platform for social researc…
From “Sooo excited!!!” to “So proud”: Using language to study development
We introduce a new method, differential language analysis (DLA), for studying human development in which computational linguistics are used to analyze the big data available through online social media in light of psychological theory. Our open vocabulary DLA approach finds words, phrases, and topics that distinguish groups of people based on 1 or more characteristics. Using a data set of over 70,000 Facebook users, we identify how word and topic…
Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior
We show that easily accessible digital records of behavior, Facebook Likes, can be used to automatically and accurately predict a range of highly sensitive personal attributes including: sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious and political views, personality traits, intelligence, happiness, use of addictive substances, parental separation, age, and gender. The analysis presented is based on a dataset of over 58,000 volunteers who provided their…
Personality, Gender, and Age in the Language of Social Media: The Open-Vocabulary Approach
We analyzed 700 million words, phrases, and topic instances collected from the Facebook messages of 75,000 volunteers, who also took standard personality tests, and found striking variations in language with personality, gender, and age. In our open-vocabulary technique, the data itself drives a comprehensive exploration of language that distinguishes people, finding connections that are not captured with traditional closed-vocabulary word-catego…
Divided we stand: Three psychological regions of the United States and their political, economic, social, and health correlates
There is overwhelming evidence for regional variation across the United States on a range of key political, economic, social, and health indicators. However, a substantial body of research suggests that activities in each of these domains are typically influenced by psychological variables, raising the possibility that psychological forces might be the mediating or causal factors responsible for regional variation in the key indicators. Thus, the…
Deep neural networks are more accurate than humans at detecting sexual orientation from facial images
We show that faces contain much more information about sexual orientation than can be perceived or interpreted by the human brain. We used deep neural networks to extract features from 35,326 facial images. These features were entered into a logistic regression aimed at classifying sexual orientation. Given a single facial image, a classifier could correctly distinguish between gay and heterosexual men in 81% of cases, and in 71% of cases for wom…
One Size Fits All: Context Collapse, Self-Presentation Strategies and Language Styles on Facebook
This study empirically examines context collapse on Facebook by examining audience influences on content and language in self-disclosures. Context collapse is the process of disparate audiences being conjoined into one. Using a public longitudinal behavioral data set of 6,378 Facebook users, the study found that the size and heterogeneity of people's networks were positively associated with the number of text status updates they posted, but negat…
Automatic personality assessment through social media language
Language use is a psychologically rich, stable individual difference with well-established correlations to personality. We describe a method for assessing personality using an open-vocabulary analysis of language from social media. We compiled the written language from 66,732 Facebook users and their questionnaire-based self-reported Big Five personality traits, and then we built a predictive model of personality based on their language. We used …
Participant recruitment and data collection through Facebook: The role of personality factors
As participant recruitment and data collection over the Internet have become more common, numerous observers have expressed concern regarding the validity of research conducted in this fashion. One growing method of conducting research over the Internet involves recruiting participants and administering questionnaires over Facebook, the world’s largest social networking service. If Facebook is to be considered a viable platform for social researc…
From “Sooo excited!!!” to “So proud”: Using language to study development
We introduce a new method, differential language analysis (DLA), for studying human development in which computational linguistics are used to analyze the big data available through online social media in light of psychological theory. Our open vocabulary DLA approach finds words, phrases, and topics that distinguish groups of people based on 1 or more characteristics. Using a data set of over 70,000 Facebook users, we identify how word and topic…
Can Well-Being be Measured Using Facebook Status Updates? Validation of Facebook’s Gross National Happiness Index
In your eyes only? Discrepancies and agreement between self- and other-reports of personality from age 14 to 29
Do others perceive the personality changes that take place between the ages of 14 and 29 in a similar fashion as the aging person him- or herself? This cross-sectional study analyzed age trajectories in self- versus other-reported Big Five personality traits and in self-other agreement in a sample of more than 10,000 individuals from the myPersonality Project. Results for self-reported personality showed maturation effects (increases in extravers…
Facial recognition technology and human raters can predict political orientation from images of expressionless faces even when controlling for demographics and self-presentation
Carefully standardized facial images of 591 participants were taken in the laboratory while controlling for self-presentation, facial expression, head orientation, and image properties. They were presented to human raters and a facial recognition algorithm: both humans (r = .21) and the algorithm ( r = .22) could predict participants' scores on a political orientation scale (Cronbach's α = .94) decorrelated with age, gender, and ethnicity. These …
When a New Tool Is Introduced in Different Cultural Contexts: Individualism-Collectivism and Social Network on Facebook
What will happen if a new tool is introduced to different cultures? What if the tool can potentially bridge those cultures? Will it be used in the same way across cultures and contribute to a decrease in cultural differences? Or will it be used in culturally appropriate ways and eventually integrated into preexisting cultural practices? To answer these questions, we predicted and examined cultural differences in the use of Facebook focusing on so…
Can Well-Being be Measured Using Facebook Status Updates? Validation of Facebook’s Gross National Happiness Index
Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior
We show that easily accessible digital records of behavior, Facebook Likes, can be used to automatically and accurately predict a range of highly sensitive personal attributes including: sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious and political views, personality traits, intelligence, happiness, use of addictive substances, parental separation, age, and gender. The analysis presented is based on a dataset of over 58,000 volunteers who provided their…
Personality, Gender, and Age in the Language of Social Media: The Open-Vocabulary Approach
We analyzed 700 million words, phrases, and topic instances collected from the Facebook messages of 75,000 volunteers, who also took standard personality tests, and found striking variations in language with personality, gender, and age. In our open-vocabulary technique, the data itself drives a comprehensive exploration of language that distinguishes people, finding connections that are not captured with traditional closed-vocabulary word-catego…
Divided we stand: Three psychological regions of the United States and their political, economic, social, and health correlates
There is overwhelming evidence for regional variation across the United States on a range of key political, economic, social, and health indicators. However, a substantial body of research suggests that activities in each of these domains are typically influenced by psychological variables, raising the possibility that psychological forces might be the mediating or causal factors responsible for regional variation in the key indicators. Thus, the…
Who Can Wait for the Future? A Personality Perspective
Who can wait for larger, delayed rewards rather than smaller, immediate ones? Delay discounting (DD) measures the rate at which subjective value of an outcome decreases as the length of time to obtaining it increases. Previous work has shown that greater DD predicts negative academic, social, and health outcomes. Yet, little is known about who is likely to engage in greater or less DD. Taking a personality perspective, in a large sample ( N = 5,8…
Participant recruitment and data collection through Facebook: The role of personality factors
As participant recruitment and data collection over the Internet have become more common, numerous observers have expressed concern regarding the validity of research conducted in this fashion. One growing method of conducting research over the Internet involves recruiting participants and administering questionnaires over Facebook, the world’s largest social networking service. If Facebook is to be considered a viable platform for social researc…
From “Sooo excited!!!” to “So proud”: Using language to study development
We introduce a new method, differential language analysis (DLA), for studying human development in which computational linguistics are used to analyze the big data available through online social media in light of psychological theory. Our open vocabulary DLA approach finds words, phrases, and topics that distinguish groups of people based on 1 or more characteristics. Using a data set of over 70,000 Facebook users, we identify how word and topic…
Computer-based personality judgments are more accurate than those made by humans
Significance This study compares the accuracy of personality judgment—a ubiquitous and important social-cognitive activity—between computer models and humans. 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 pers…
Facebook as a research tool for the social sciences: Opportunities, challenges, ethical considerations, and practical guidelines
Facebook is rapidly gaining recognition as a powerful research tool for the social sciences. It constitutes a large and diverse pool of participants, who can be selectively recruited for both online and offline studies. Additionally, it facilitates data collection by storing detailed records of its users' demographic profiles, social interactions, and behaviors. With participants' consent, these data can be recorded retrospectively in a convenien…
Automatic personality assessment through social media language
Language use is a psychologically rich, stable individual difference with well-established correlations to personality. We describe a method for assessing personality using an open-vocabulary analysis of language from social media. We compiled the written language from 66,732 Facebook users and their questionnaire-based self-reported Big Five personality traits, and then we built a predictive model of personality based on their language. We used …
When a New Tool Is Introduced in Different Cultural Contexts: Individualism-Collectivism and Social Network on Facebook
What will happen if a new tool is introduced to different cultures? What if the tool can potentially bridge those cultures? Will it be used in the same way across cultures and contribute to a decrease in cultural differences? Or will it be used in culturally appropriate ways and eventually integrated into preexisting cultural practices? To answer these questions, we predicted and examined cultural differences in the use of Facebook focusing on so…
The Song Is You: Preferences for Musical Attribute Dimensions Reflect Personality
Research suggests that musical preferences are linked to personality, but this research has been hindered by genre-based theories and methods. We address this limitation using a novel method based on the actual attributes that people perceive from music. In Study 1, using 102 musical pieces representing 26 genres and subgenres, we show that 38 perceived attributes in music can be organized into three basic dimensions: arousal, valence, and depth.…
Effects of Geum urbanum L. root extracts and its constituents on polymorphonuclear leucocytes functions. Significance in periodontal diseases
Self‐Monitoring and the Metatraits
Prior attempts at locating self‐monitoring within general taxonomies of personality traits have largely proved unsuccessful. However, past research has typically neglected (a) the bidimensionality of the Self‐Monitoring Scale and (b) the hierarchical nature of personality. The objective of this study was to test hypotheses that the two self‐monitoring factors are located at the level of the metatraits. Using data from two large multi‐informant sa…
Psychological targeting as an effective approach to digital mass persuasion
Significance Building on recent advancements in the assessment of psychological traits from digital footprints, this paper demonstrates the effectiveness of psychological mass persuasion—that is, the adaptation of persuasive appeals to the psychological characteristics of large groups of individuals with the goal of influencing their behavior. On the one hand, this form of psychological mass persuasion could be used to help people make better dec…
Frankly, We Do Give a Damn: The Relationship Between Profanity and Honesty
There are two conflicting perspectives regarding the relationship between profanity and dishonesty. These two forms of norm-violating behavior share common causes and are often considered to be positively related. On the other hand, however, profanity is often used to express one’s genuine feelings and could therefore be negatively related to dishonesty. In three studies, we explored the relationship between profanity and honesty. We examined pro…
Age trends in musical preferences in adulthood: 1. Conceptualization and empirical investigation
This article aims to fill some gaps in theory and research on age trends in musical preferences in adulthood by presenting a conceptual model that describes three classes of determinants that can affect those trends. The Music Preferences in Adulthood Model (MPAM) posits that some psychological determinants that are extrinsic to the music (individual differences and social influences), and some that are intrinsic to the music (the perceived inner…
Living in the Past, Present, and Future: Measuring Temporal Orientation With Language
Temporal orientation refers to individual differences in the relative emphasis one places on the past, present, or future, and it is related to academic, financial, and health outcomes. We propose and evaluate a method for automatically measuring temporal orientation through language expressed on social media. Judges rated the temporal orientation of 4,302 social media messages. We trained a classifier based on these ratings, which could accurate…
The Language of Religious Affiliation: Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Differences
Religious affiliation is an important identifying characteristic for many individuals and relates to numerous life outcomes including health, well-being, policy positions, and cognitive style. Using methods from computational linguistics, we examined language from 12,815 Facebook users in the United States and United Kingdom who indicated their religious affiliation. Religious individuals used more positive emotion words ( β = .278, p
One Size Fits All: Context Collapse, Self-Presentation Strategies and Language Styles on Facebook
This study empirically examines context collapse on Facebook by examining audience influences on content and language in self-disclosures. Context collapse is the process of disparate audiences being conjoined into one. Using a public longitudinal behavioral data set of 6,378 Facebook users, the study found that the size and heterogeneity of people's networks were positively associated with the number of text status updates they posted, but negat…
Deep neural networks are more accurate than humans at detecting sexual orientation from facial images
We show that faces contain much more information about sexual orientation than can be perceived or interpreted by the human brain. We used deep neural networks to extract features from 35,326 facial images. These features were entered into a logistic regression aimed at classifying sexual orientation. Given a single facial image, a classifier could correctly distinguish between gay and heterosexual men in 81% of cases, and in 71% of cases for wom…
In your eyes only? Discrepancies and agreement between self- and other-reports of personality from age 14 to 29
Do others perceive the personality changes that take place between the ages of 14 and 29 in a similar fashion as the aging person him- or herself? This cross-sectional study analyzed age trajectories in self- versus other-reported Big Five personality traits and in self-other agreement in a sample of more than 10,000 individuals from the myPersonality Project. Results for self-reported personality showed maturation effects (increases in extravers…
Modern Psychometrics: The Science of Psychological Assessment
Regional personality assessment through social media language
OBJECTIVE: We explore the personality of counties as assessed through linguistic patterns on social media. Such studies were previously limited by the cost and feasibility of large-scale surveys; however, language-based computational models applied to large social media datasets now allow for large-scale personality assessment. METHOD: We applied a language-based assessment of the five factor model of personality to 6,064,267 U.S. Twitter users. …
Political Attitudes and Disease Threat: Regional Pathogen Stress Is Associated With Conservative Ideology Only for Older Individuals
What environmental factors are associated with individual differences in political ideology, and do such associations change over time? We examine whether reductions in pathogen prevalence in U.S. states over the past 60 years are associated with reduced associations between parasite stress and conservatism. We report a positive association between infection levels and conservative ideology in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. However…
Psychology (25 works) · Social Psychology (19 works) · Personality (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Personality Traits and Psychology (9 works) · Cognitive psychology (8 works) · Developmental psychology (8 works) · Big Five personality traits (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Political science (6 works)