StudioE9’s client, Signal Patterns, talks about their new scientific-based social web application.
People are continuously looking for new ways to discover more about themselves and their friends. At Signal Patterns, we are devoted to creating innovative, scientific-based social web applications that help to characterize and connect people in novel and meaningful ways. Comprised of leading experts in personality psychology, psychometrics and cognitive neuroscience, our Science Team works closely with our developers to create surveys and models that cover a wide range of domains. We offer users custom-tailored feedback that is engaging and interactive, as well as a way to search and connect with friends and like-minded individuals.
Based on the Big Five Theory of Personality and the FUSES ModelSM of Musical Preferences, our current personality and music preference surveys aim to help people identify and recognize their own unique patterns and preferences. Survey results foster both self-discovery and self-expression; users are able to explore in detail their unique traits, characteristics and preferences and then post badges of their patterns on personal blogs and webpages. Based on their Signal Patterns results, users then have the ability to compare themselves with their friends, search for new people based on traits and preferences, discover new musical genres and artists and eventually uncover new books, films or jobs that interest them.
This past year and a half has marked not only the launch of SignalPatterns.com, but also the launch of our new Personality Patterns application on Facebook. Although still in private beta mode, Signal Patterns’ user base is growing rapidly due in part to the innovative and engaging aspect of the site, as well as from our ability to provide users with truly unique results. There is a reason why The Inquisitr has called Signal Patterns “…perhaps the most deep and meaningful social connection service [they] have even seen…”
1 RESPONSE SO FAR.
1 Lucie // Oct 4, 2008 at 11:38 am
The big five isn’t really a theory, it is a set of factors that keep co-occurring through statistical analyses. They are an interesting descriptive taxonomy.
My students tend to like the approach. Myself, I am not that fond of trait theory because what you get out of a factorial analysis depends very much on what you put in. Traits emerge from the analysis of correlation matrices where various measures are correlated with each other. Your matrix and therefore analysis is limited to the measures that were considered. So there could be important aspects of personality that don’t find their way into this.
Unlike for ex the Myers Briggs measure (coming out of Jungian theory), or the Eysenck measures (corresponding to a biological approach), the big 5 are a-theoretical. There are some theories that were constructed a posteriori, but they are weak. So it is hard to interpret these factors.
In any event, this does probably represent more rigor what is found in most social networking applications.
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