Practically all of us have a Facebook profile and, let anyone who has not given their opinion about someone based on their profile picture on social networks put their hand in the fire. A quick glance at their Facebook photo and we already seem to have all the information we need about that person. Thus, a team of researchers from the Center for Psychometry at the University of Cambridge (UK) has developed an algorithm to predict how smart someone is just by looking at their profile picture.
To create this algorithm, the experts were based on 1,122 profiles and intelligence tests of their owners , to measure intelligence according to the components of the photo: colors, the presence of friends or partner, clothing, background … All of these factors reveal information about people’s lifestyles and the way we choose to show ourselves to the world.
The team was able to accurately predict not only how smart someone really was, but also how smart we tend to think of others (for example, when someone wears serious glasses = stereotype).
According to the conclusions of the study, the most intelligent individuals would be those who appear alone in the profile photo, the photograph is well focused, the background is ordered and the prevailing color is green in its multiple shades. On the other hand, profile photos with more people and with pinkish, red or purple backgrounds would be the least intelligent.
“Our results show that a mismatch indicates an inaccurate stereotype and an inaccurate judgment. We hope that our research can provide information for people to better manage their representations on the Internet ”, says Xingjie Wei, co-author of the work.
The study has been published on Arxiv.org
