Rating e-mail personality at zero acquaintance

Electronic media are pervasive in daily communication. But how well do personality ratings of short e-mail messages match the self-reports of the authors? Here we describe a small-scale preliminary study to test this. Working independently and under experimenter supervision, 30 judges each rated 18 short e-mail texts. These texts were written under experimental conditions by authors of known personality, who briefly described their recent activities, and were collected as part of a previous study, which demonstrated linguistic projection of personality. Even with minimal textual cues there is relatively high agreement for ratings of Extraversion, with lesser agreement for Psychoticism. However, agreement for Neuroticism ratings, especially between target and judges, appears to be further reduced by the environment. In addition to demonstrating agreement in asynchronous—rather than synchronous—computer-mediated communication, this study adopts the three-factor model of personality and uses exemplar-based and subjective measures of personality perception. We note the need for further research.