Do the movies people list on their Facebook profiles say something about who they are? Common sense says they do, but it’s not clear what they say exactly or how reliable the message is. Over the past several months, MyType users have provided us with a wealth of data to explore this question. Nearly 100,000 people who completed a core psychology quiz also shared the movies portion of their Facebook profiles. In a series of blog posts, we’ll dig into this data to see what it can tell us.

This initial post profiles the fan bases of four popular movies: The Lord of the Rings, Sex and the City, The Notebook and Fight Club.  Each movie’s fan profile highlights how its fans differ from everyone else.  Sex and the City fans, for instance, are 1.4 times more likely to be moody, and 1.7 times more likely to value power.  Yeah, they’re complicated.. just like the four women the movie revolves around.  Fight Club fans, as you will see, are also more likely to have traits embodied by the movie’s characters.

Please keep in mind that these fan profiles are statistics, not stereotypes.  A more accurate, less fun headline would be “Fight Club’s Facebook Fans Are More Likely To Be Sophisticated, Thrill-Seeking Non-Conformists”.  There are plenty of unsophisticated, conventional Fight Club fans out there. We can’t all be like Tyler Durden.

Lord of the Rings

Considering that the The Lord of the Rings movies are some of the most popular of all time, you might expect fans of the trilogy to be pretty normal, or statistically average.  While this is mostly true, the fan profile highlights a few key differences — some predictable, others more revealing.  Predictably, LOTR fans are more likely than others to be imaginative and to value tradition.  An immersive fantasy world requires some imagination to appreciate, and the story’s themes are about as traditional as they come.

Fans are also 25% more likely to value conformity, which is again in line with the films. But I suspect there’s another factor at play.  Liking a movie (or anything) on Facebook is often a two-part decision: 1) how much do I actually like the movie, and 2) what will Facebook-liking this movie say about me to others?  (For some people, #2 operates semi- or even un-consciously.  For others, it’s very consciously the most important factor.  If you’re sincerely skeptical about #2’s existence at all, please read Hugo Liu’s Social Network Profiles As Taste Performances, or subscribe to this blog, we’ll write about this topic in depth another time.  In the meantime, ask your friends about it, you’ll be surprised.)  Given the extreme popularity of the LOTR movies, Facebook-liking them says in a small way that you’re not that different.  People who value conformity should be comfortable with this signal, perhaps even welcome it.  For non-conformists, on the other hand, it’s a deterrent.

The least predictable part of the LOTR fan profile, at least for me, is the set of relatively high scores on all five moral foundations we measure.  But in hindsight this makes sense.  LOTR is fundamentally a story of good vs. evil, and there is no subtlety about who is on which side.  This kind of black and white morality play should appeal to those with strong moral convictions, especially when good wins over evil.

The Lord of the Rings Fan Profile

Based on 5,674 fans.  The figures are likelihood ratios, for instance LOTR fans are 1.2 times (20%) more likely than others to score high on imagination as measured by our psychology survey.

	Personality Imaginative (1.2x)			Values Tradition (1.4x) Conformity (1.25x)
	Morals No Harm (1.25x) Fairness (1.3x) Group Loyalty (1.4x) Purity (1.4x) Respect for Authority (1.3x)			Politics Conservative (1.3x) Libertarian (1.4x)
	Demographics Male (1.2x) 18-23 (1.45x) 24-29 (1.25x) Midwest (1.25x)			Education & Income Some College (1.2x) Professional Degree (1.35x)

Other Standout Characteristics Religiosity: devoutly religious (1.4x).  Professional Values: morality (1.4x).  Interests: books and literature (1.2x), computers and electronics (1.25x), religion and spirituality (1.2x), science (1.2x), video games (1.55x).
 
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For over 17,000 Americans taking one of MyType’s psychology surveys, we inserted a question about the Tea Party to reveal the demographics, values, morals and personalities of the movement’s supporters (see the full report).  Looking for the defining characteristics of a presumably cohesive party, we instead found the movement in the middle of an identity crisis.  According to MyType’s data, devoutly religious conservatives comprise 22.5% of the Tea Party and are its fastest growing segment.  They bring with them a fundamentally different set of values, morals and personalities than libertarian supporters, a core group that represent 17% of the party.  While the former tend to be morally charged, family-oriented traditionalists, many libertarian supporters are neither religious nor traditional.  Rather, they are independent, intellectual, and morally permissive.  The rising prominence of religious conservatives within the movement, highlighted by recent religious right rhetoric from several prominent figures affiliated with the Tea Party, appears to be driving away libertarians and others.  Despite the surge in support from religious conservatives, overall support for the Tea Party is in decline.

To mitigate sample bias, the set of over 17,000 American respondents was normalized to reflect the age, gender, location and distribution of the general US population between the ages of 18 and 60. MyType's methodology is explained in detail in the full report.

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Updated with comments on methodology below.  Also I discuss the results on an LA radio station here. The iPad is one of the more controversial mainstream technology products in recent memory.  Some love it, others think it’s pointless.  Naturally, the debaters believe that their opinions are about the product.  I actually think it’s more about them and their personal differences.  Recent MyType survey data backs me up, indicating that behind the controversy is a personality clash between selfish elites and independent geeks.  Check out the full iPad Opinion Profile for all the numbers and colorful charts, or keep reading for the highlights.

The Study

From March through May of 2010 MyType surveyed over 20,000 of its users on Facebook about Apple’s iPad to reveal the personality traits, values, demographics and interests that drive differences in opinion about the new tablet computer.  After weighting the responses to reflect the composition of the general internet-using US population, at least between the ages of 13 and 49 (we need more Beatles’ era users), we were happy to discover that our numbers were in line with results from a recent Forrestor survey.

Opinions about the iPad weighted to reflect the composition of the general internet using population in the US between the ages of 13 and 49

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2008 US Presidential Candidates Barack Obama and John McCain

In the weeks leading up to the United States’ 2008 general election, we ran a poll asking how our users planned to vote. We wanted to see if a user’s personality type correlated with their voting intentions. Did Obama’s idealistic message of change win the support of Idealists? Were guardians reassured by McCain’s views on national security?

First, about the data: Over 2000 people took the poll including about 400 or so International users, who overwhelmingly support Obama. However, the bulk of this analysis relates to the 1526 valid American responses.

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