Social media-predicted personality traits and values can help match people to their ideal jobs

© 2019 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Work is thought to be more enjoyable and beneficial to individuals and society when there is congruence between one's personality and one's occupation. We provide large-scale evidence that occupations have distinctive psychological profiles, which can successfully be predicted from linguistic information unobtrusively collected through social media. Based on 128,279 Twitter users representing 3,513 occupations, we automatically assess user personalities and visually map the personality profiles of different professions. Similar occupations cluster together, pointing to specific sets of jobs that one might be well suited for. Observations that contradict existing classifications may point to emerging occupations relevant to the 21st century workplace. Findings illustrate how social media can be used to match people to their ideal occupation

Do children's expectations about future physical activity predict their physical activity in adulthood?

BACKGROUND: Much of the population fails to meet recommended physical activity (PA) levels, but there remains considerable individual variation. By understanding drivers of different trajectories, interventions can be better targeted and more effective. One such driver may be a person's physical activity identity (PAI)-the extent to which a person perceives PA as central to who they are. METHODS: Using survey information and a unique body of essays written at age 11 from the National Child Development Study (N = 10 500), essays mentioning PA were automatically identified using the machine learning technique support vector classification and PA trajectories were estimated using latent class analysis. Analyses tested the extent to which childhood PAI correlated with activity levels from age 23 through 55 and with trajectories across adulthood. RESULTS: 42.2% of males and 33.5% of females mentioned PA in their essays, describing active and/or passive engagement. Active PAI in childhood was correlated with higher levels of activity for men but not women, and was correlated with consistently active PA trajectories for both genders. Passive PAI was not related to PA for either gender. CONCLUSIONS: This study offers a novel approach for analysing large qualitative datasets to assess identity and behaviours. Findings suggest that at as young as 11 years old, the way a young person conceptualizes activity as part of their identity has a lasting association with behaviour. Still, an active identity may require a supportive sociocultural context to manifest in subsequent behaviour

Women are warmer but no less assertive than men: gender and language on Facebook

Using a large social media dataset and open-vocabulary methods from computational linguistics, we explored differences in language use across gender, affiliation, and assertiveness. In Study 1, we analyzed topics (groups of semantically similar words) across 10 million messages from over 52,000 Facebook users. Most language differed little across gender. However, topics most associated with self-identified female participants included friends, family, and social life, whereas topics most associated with self-identified male participants included swearing, anger, discussion of objects instead of people, and the use of argumentative language. In Study 2, we plotted male- and female-linked language topics along two interpersonal dimensions prevalent in gender research: affiliation and assertiveness. In a sample of over 15,000 Facebook users, we found substantial gender differences in the use of affiliative language and slight differences in assertive language. Language used more by self-identified females was interpersonally warmer, more compassionate, polite, and—contrary to previous findings—slightly more assertive in their language use, whereas language used more by self-identified males was colder, more hostile, and impersonal. Computational linguistic analysis combined with methods to automatically label topics offer means for testing psychological theories unobtrusively at large scale.This work was supported by the Templeton Religion Trust

Living in the past, present, and future: measuring temporal orientation with language

OBJECTIVE: Temporal orientation refers to individual differences in the relative emphasis one places on the past, present, or future, and is related to academic, financial, and health outcomes. We propose and evaluate a method for automatically measuring temporal orientation through language expressed on social media. METHOD: Judges rated the temporal orientation of 4,302 social media messages. We trained a classifier based on these ratings, which could accurately predict the temporal orientation of new messages in a separate validation set (accuracy/mean sensitivity = .72; mean specificity = .77). We used the classifier to automatically classify 1.3 million messages written by 5,372 participants (50% female, aged 13-48). Finally, we tested whether individual differences in past, present, and future orientation differentially related to gender, age, Big Five personality, satisfaction with life, and depressive symptoms. RESULTS: Temporal orientations exhibit several expected correlations with age, gender, and Big Five personality. More future-oriented people were older, more likely to be female, more conscientious, less impulsive, less depressed, and more satisfied with life; present orientation showed the opposite pattern. CONCLUSION: Language-based assessments can complement and extend existing measures of temporal orientation, providing an alternative approach and additional insights into language and personality relationships. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.Support for this article was provided by grant #63597 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (M. E. P. Seligman, PI) and by a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust (M.E.P. Seligman, H. A. Schwartz, L. H. Ungar, co-PIs)

Personality, gender, and age in the language of social media: the open-vocabulary approach

We analyzed 700 million words, phrases, and topic instances collected from the Facebook messages of 75,000 volunteers, who also took standard personality tests, and found striking variations in language with personality, gender, and age. In our open-vocabulary technique, the data itself drives a comprehensive exploration of language that distinguishes people, finding connections that are not captured with traditional closed-vocabulary word-category analyses. Our analyses shed new light on psychosocial processes yielding results that are face valid (e.g., subjects living in high elevations talk about the mountains), tie in with other research (e.g., neurotic people disproportionately use the phrase ‘sick of’ and the word ‘depressed’), suggest new hypotheses (e.g., an active life implies emotional stability), and give detailed insights (males use the possessive ‘my’ when mentioning their ‘wife’ or ‘girlfriend’ more often than females use ‘my’ with ‘husband’ or 'boyfriend’). To date, this represents the largest study, by an order of magnitude, of language and personalit

Wavelength-scale stationary-wave integrated Fourier-transform spectrometry

Spectrometry is a general physical-analysis approach for investigating light-matter interactions. However, the complex designs of existing spectrometers render them resistant to simplification and miniaturization, both of which are vital for applications in micro- and nanotechnology and which are now undergoing intensive research. Stationary-wave integrated Fourier-transform spectrometry (SWIFTS)-an approach based on direct intensity detection of a standing wave resulting from either reflection (as in the principle of colour photography by Gabriel Lippmann) or counterpropagative interference phenomenon-is expected to be able to overcome this drawback. Here, we present a SWIFTS-based spectrometer relying on an original optical near-field detection method in which optical nanoprobes are used to sample directly the evanescent standing wave in the waveguide. Combined with integrated optics, we report a way of reducing the volume of the spectrometer to a few hundreds of cubic wavelengths. This is the first attempt, using SWIFTS, to produce a very small integrated one-dimensional spectrometer suitable for applications where microspectrometers are essential

Clonal karyotype evolution involving ring chromosome 1 with myelodysplastic syndrome subtype RAEB-t progressing into acute leukemia

s Karyotypic evolution is a well-known phenomenon in patients with malignant hernatological disorders during disease progression. We describe a 50-year-old male patient who had originally presented with pancytopenia in October 1992. The diagnosis of a myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) FAB subtype RAEB-t was established in April 1993 by histological bone marrow (BM) examination, and therapy with low-dose cytosine arabinoside was initiated. In a phase of partial hernatological remission, cytogenetic assessment in August 1993 revealed a ring chromosome 1 in 13 of 21 metaphases beside BM cells with normal karyotypes {[}46,XY,r(1)(p35q31)/46,XY]. One month later, the patient progressed to an acute myeloid leukemia (AML), subtype M4 with 40% BM blasts and cytogenetic examination showed clonal evolution by the appearance of additional numerical aberrations in addition to the ring chromosome{[}46,XY,r(1),+8,-21/45,XY,r(1),+8,-21,-22/46, XY]. Intensive chemotherapy and radiotherapy was applied to induce remission in preparation for allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (BMT) from the patient's HLA-compatible son. After BMT, complete remission was clinically, hematologically and cytogenetically (normal male karyotype) confirmed. A complete hematopoietic chimerism was demonstrated. A relapse in January 1997 was successfully treated using donor lymphocyte infusion and donor peripheral blood stem cells (PB-SC) in combination with GM-CSF as immunostimulating agent in April 1997, and the patient's clinical condition remained stable as of January 2005. This is an interesting case of a patient with AML secondary to MDS. With the ring chromosome 1 we also describe a rare cytogenetic abnormality that predicted the poor prognosis of the patient, but the patient could be cured by adoptive immunotherapy and the application of donor's PB-SC. This case confirms the value of cytogenetic analysis in characterizing the malignant clone in hernatological neoplasias, the importance of controlling the quality of an induced remission and of the detection of a progress of the disease. Copyright (c) 2006 S. Karger AG, Basel

Cytotoxic polyfunctionality maturation of cytomegalovirus-pp65-specific CD4 + and CD8 + T-cell responses in older adults positively correlates with response size

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is one of the most common persistent viral infections in humans worldwide and is epidemiologically associated with many adverse health consequences during aging. Previous studies yielded conflicting results regarding whether large, CMV-specific T-cell expansions maintain their function during human aging. In the current study, we examined the in vitro CMV-pp65-reactive T-cell response by comprehensively studying five effector functions (i.e., interleukin-2, tumor necrosis factor-α, interferon-γ, perforin, and CD107a expression) in 76 seropositive individuals aged 70 years or older. Two data-driven, polyfunctionality panels (IL-2-associated and cytotoxicity-associated) derived from effector function co-expression patterns were used to analyze the results. We found that, CMV-pp65-reactive CD8 + and CD4 + T cells contained similar polyfunctional subsets, and the level of polyfunctionality was related to the size of antigen-specific response. In both CD8 + and CD4 + cells, polyfunctional cells with high cytotoxic potential accounted for a larger proportion of the total response as the total response size increased. Notably, a higher serum CMV-IgG level was positively associated with a larger T-cell response size and a higher level of cytotoxic polyfunctionality. These findings indicate that CMV-pp65-specific CD4 + and CD8 + T cell undergo simultaneous cytotoxic polyfunctionality maturation during aging

The language of religious affiliation: social, emotional, and cognitive differences

Religious affiliation is an important identifying characteristic for many individuals and relates to numerous life outcomes including health, well-being, policy positions, and cognitive style. Using methods from computational linguistics, we examined language from 12,815 Facebook users in the United States and United Kingdom who indicated their religious affiliation. Religious individuals used more positive emotion words (β = .278, p < .0001) and social themes such as family (β = .242, p < .0001), while nonreligious people expressed more negative emotions like anger (β = −.427, p < .0001) and categories related to cognitive processes, like tentativeness (β = −.153, p < .0001). Nonreligious individuals also used more themes related to the body (β = −.265, p < .0001) and death (β = −.247, p < .0001). The findings offer directions for future research on religious affiliation, specifically in terms of social, emotional, and cognitive differences

Gastrointestinal failure in intensive care: a retrospective clinical study in three different intensive care units in Germany and Estonia

BACKGROUND: While gastrointestinal problems are common in ICU patients with multiple organ failure, gastrointestinal failure has not been given the consideration other organ systems receive. The aim of this study was to evaluate the incidence of gastrointestinal failure (GIF), to identify its risk factors, and to determine its association with ICU mortality. METHODS: A retrospective analysis of adult patients (n = 2588) admitted to three different ICUs (two ICUs at the university hospital Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany and one at Tartu University Clinics, Estonia) during the year 2002 was performed. Data recorded in a computerized database were used in Berlin. In Tartu, the data documented in the patients' charts was retrospectively transferred into a similar database. GIF was defined as documented gastrointestinal problems (food intolerance, gastrointestinal haemorrhage, and/or ileus) in the patient data at any period of their ICU stay. ICU mortality, length of stay, and duration of mechanical ventilation were assessed as outcome parameters. RESULTS: GIF was identified in 252 patients (9.7% of all patients). Only 20% of GIF patients were identifiable at admission. GIF was related to significantly higher mortality (43.7% vs. 5.3% in patients without GIF), as well as prolonged length of ICU stay (10 vs. 2 days) and mechanical ventilation (8 vs. 1 day), p < 0.001, respectively. Patients' profile (emergency surgical or medical), APACHE II and SOFA scores and the use of catecholamines at admission were identified as independent risk factors for the development of GIF. Development of GIF during ICU stay was an independent predictor for death. CONCLUSION: Gastrointestinal failure represents a relevant clinical problem accompanied by an increased mortality, longer ICU stay and mechanical ventilation