Hey EskimoPieLoves324b21, how hireable do you think you are?
Hey guys, Julia here for DNews
Once upon a time, in the early days of the internet.
People used the platform to play around with identity, you could be whoever you wanted
to be.
You could even be different people!
It was so much fun.
Sadly.. those days are gone.
According to researchers from the University of Washington most people today say their
online persona and their offline self are pretty similar.
There are a number of studies that show how much first impressions matter.
One of the first things people see about us online is our username or email address.
And man.
Does it matter.
Which means that how you present yourself online, says a lot about you.
We concern ourselves so much with the big parts of our online persona, like our profile
picture or our bio, yet a lot can be inferred from something as small as an email address.
One study published in the Journal of Research in Personality called “How extraverted is
honey.bunny77@hotmail.de?”
found that people are actually pretty good at inferring personality from email addresses.
Researchers looked at almost 600 e-mail addresses of young adults.
They collected data from personality tests that judged traits like neuroticism, openness,
agreeableness, conscientiousness, and narcissism and extraversion.
The researchers then asked 100 other people what their impressions of those people’s
personalities were.
They found that most people’s impressions were pretty much the same based only on e-mail
address alone.
Which you know, personality psychology is a little controversial, but the study at least
showed there are certain stereotypes at play with email addresses and those stereotypes
affect how people see you.
Which matters a lot when you’re trying to land a job.
One study published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking found that
your email address makes a difference when applying to jobs.
It kind of sounds like a no-duh thing, but there actually hasn’t been a lot of empirical
evidence to back it up.
73 professional recruiters looked at fake resumes, the resumes had a mix of things like
spelling errors, different typefaces and informal and formal email addresses.
The recruiters judged the applicants on intelligence and the 6 personality traits I mentioned earlier.
The study found that a less than professional email address like luv_u_sanne@hotmail.com,
was just as hurtful as spelling mistakes.
Even which email service you use says a lot about you.
It could indicate how “tech savvy” you are.
Mailchimp did a survey that found that gmail and hotmail users tend be used by the young
adults with a median age of 31.
Yeah I know Hotmail is so passe to us in the States… but it’s still popular by young
people abroad.
Gmail users use Google Chrome and like tech stuff.
If you use a yahoo address you’re probably around settling down age, like 34, you like
religion and maybe interested in recruitment and staffing. (and you’re probably no fun
at parties) If your email ends in an AOL.com or Comcast.com you might be in your mid 40s
and are interested in the finer things in life like good food and gardening.
So whether we like it or not, our email addresses say a lot about us.
So much science to learn, you guys!
So much I couldn’t possibly fit it all into one episode.
Fortunately, we’ll have a chance to talk MORE science on Thursday April 9 at 2 PM,
pacific 5 eastern.
That’s when we’re hanging out with Mitchell Moffit and Greg Brown from ASAPScience and
Joe Hanson from It's Okay to Be Smart!
RSVP with the link in the description because you do not want to miss it.