What your online profile says about you may not be what you expect. Psychologist Sam Gosling of the University of Texas, Austin, has found that while profiles on social networking sites like Facebook present a generally accurate portrait of their owners, this is often at odds with the impression they think they are putting across.
Gosling and colleagues recorded the Facebook profiles of 133 students, which included photos, personal details and text messages from friends. They then showed these profiles to strangers and compared their impressions with a personality score derived by combining the way the profiles’ owners described themselves…
