There are several ways to detect someone’s personality through Facebook, but the new “My Personality” application can reveal more than many students may expect.

In the application, users are asked to answer up to 100 questions about themselves which reveal personality ratings in the categories of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

Afterward, users can compare themselves to others who also have the application and can also have their friends judge their personality.

Allison Pepich, a junior animal science major at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said she added the application because she wanted to see how accurate it was.

“I added the application because I thought it would be interesting to see if it actually matched my perception of my personality,” Pepich said. “I was surprised when it was more accurate than I thought it would be.”

NIU psychology professor Keith Millis said it is highly likely for this program to be an accurate depiction of an individual’s personality.

“A computerized survey can assess a person’s personality given the survey has been adequately constructed and validated,” Millis said.

Millis said some users may be skeptical of such a program, but the application has merit.

“Of course, at first blush many would question such a claim since we have a wealth of knowledge about ourselves and tend to think of ourselves as being more unique than we probably are,” he said.

Psychologists use several traits when analyzing personalities, Millis said.

“Personality is a collection of various traits and dispositions that are relatively stable across situations,” Millis said. “The big five – openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism – are accepted by most psychologists as being valid attributes of personality.”

Brad Sagarin, an NIU associate psychology professor, agreed with Millis’ assessment.

“Psychologists have developed reliable and valid measures of these traits,” Sagarin said. “If Facebook is using one of these measures, then they may be providing reasonable estimates of respondents’ levels of these traits.”