15 June 2020

Personality From Photos

When you look at a photo of an ancestor, one you never knew, do you get an impression of their personality?

A recent article Assessing the Big Five personality traits using real-life static facial images reports findings of a study in Russia. 

The "Big Five" personality traits are agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism and openness.

The study finds "associations were strongest for conscientiousness and weakest for openness. Extraversion and neuroticism were significantly better predicted for women than for men."

While it's far too early to have much confidence in extrapolation from the Russian sample at present it is one to watch. Maybe MyHeritage with its recent interest in photo enhancement might be interested in pursuing this further.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks John. Fascinating. BT

jon said...


The nature.com link does not work. Its very long and page says too many redirects. So I chopped it down to the essential but it still will not load saying it doesn't exist.

Hmmmm jon

JDR said...

Jon. There does now appear to be a problem. In a case like this try googling the title of the article quoted which will likely get you there more efficiently.