Twitter profile picture can reveal your personality type

Twitterati, take note! Your profile picture may not only show your followers how attractive you are, but also tell a lot about your personality, says a new study.
Researchers from University of Pennsylvania, US, used character assessment software to analyse the profile pictures of 66,000 Twitter users, and asked a further 434 people to fill in a psychological survey. They sorted the respondents into five personality categories -neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extroversion and openness to experience.


According to researchers, neurotic people have trouble holding back their negative emotions and are likely to set their profile picture as something other than their face, such as a pet. The profile pictures of agreeable people are most likely to be colourful, and will feature the person laughing, playing with others or smiling broadly , they said.

Conscientious people may appear older than their years in profile pictures, and will use techniques such as wearing glasses or smarter clothes to achieve this.

Extroverts are likely to have colourful profile pictures and are always smiling. They also tend to pose with young people, or adopt other techniques to make themselves appear younger. People who are open to experience may pose with an object and take colourless photos, looking angry or sad, researchers said.