FB photos may hold clues to your personality

Scientists have found that how you manage the photos on your Facebook profile may tell whether you are an extrovert, a neurotic or a conscientious person.

Extroverts and neurotics both upload significant numbers of photos to their Facebook pages, but extroverts tend to change their profile cover photos, while neurotics are likely to upload more photos per album, researchers said.

They recruited more than 100 people between the ages of 17 and 55, and the participants completed questionnaires about their personality and demographics.

The researchers then studied how the individuals uploaded photos and interacted with their Facebook friends.

The link between extroversion and the tendency to upload lots of photos may not seem surprising, but researchers said the same tendency can also be explained in neurotics.

The study described neurotics as people who are "characterised by a temperamental nature, being prone to stress and anxiety".

"Our findings suggest [neurotics] seek acceptance implicitly through intensive photo uploads to look more attractive and popular online and to 'keep up with the Joneses', or to keep up with the popular visual culture," said study author Azar Eftekhar, a PhD student in the department of psychology at the University of Wolverhampton, in the UK.

The researchers also found that conscientious people in the study uploaded more videos and created more "self-generated" photo albums than people who were generally less thorough in real life, 'Live Science' reported.

The researchers defined "self-generated" albums as any collection of photos beyond the albums automatically created by Facebook such as the profile picture album, cover album and video album.

"The point is that such [conscientious] individuals are self-disciplined and goal-orientated, thus they have [a] tendency to document and organise their photos and videos using online visual tools," Eftekhar said.

The study was published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.