Measuring Psychological Traits Using Social Media

Lyle Ungar will speak on “Measuring Psychological Traits Using Social Media” on Thursday, April 5 from 12:45–1:45 p.m. in Stuart Building, Room 111. Ungar is a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also holds appointments in multiple departments in the schools of business, medicine, arts and sciences, and engineering and applied sciences.

According to Ungar, social media like Twitter and Facebook provide a rich if imperfect view of who people are and what they care about. He analyzes tens of millions of Facebook posts and tens of billions of tweets for variation in language use by age, gender, personality, and mental and physical well-being. Among other things, he has found correlations between language use and county-level health data that suggest connections between health and happiness, including potential psychological causes of heart disease. Ungar says similar analyses are increasingly being used for applications ranging from job candidate screening to targeted marketing.

Ungar received a B.S. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from M.I.T. He has published more than 250 articles, supervised two dozen Ph.D. students, and is co-inventor on 10 patents.

Event Topic

Distinguished Lecture Series