myPersonality Research

You may have seen in the media recently that an ApTiquant study apparently found that Internet Explorer (IE) users have a low IQ. Mainstream media around the world reported on it for a couple of days, until someone pointed out that ApTiquant is a completely new company and it copied much of its website from another website. The story was bogus.

If you look at ApTiquant’s original graph, it’s not surprising that it was fake. Apparently IE 6 users are 19 IQ points below the average. That would put anyone who uses IE6 into around the 11th percentile of the population. Differences that big just don’t happen.

But why was the article accepted so uncritically by the media? Because it seems to make sense. Internet Explorer is the default browser, so perhaps people who stick with it are the type who don’t like to try new things because they are happiest with what they’re used to. Part of the definition of a high IQ is someone who has no trouble adapting to new situations.

Since we run the MyIQ Facebook application, we’re ideally placed to have a look. Unfortunately we don’t store users’ browsers, however our LikeAudience website already lists the average IQs of the people who like various things on Facebook. So here’s the page for people who like Internet Explorer and for people who like FireFox.

IE’s average IQ is way below average, but Firefox’s is way above average. So actually ApTiquant’s fake results aren’t completely off the mark! However, the average IQ of people who like IE is around 93, and for Firefox it’s about 104, so the differences are a long way from the massive ones that ApTiquant fabricated.

It’s not all bad for people who like IE though. You can see from the profiles above that their life satisfaction is above average (Firefox’s is below average). IE likers also have more Facebook friends than Firefox ones.

Update: By the way, here’s the LikeAudience page for Chrome. Average IQ is ever so slightly lower than Firefox, around 103.

Back in October 2009 myPersonality advertised a study by Dr Gareth Hagger-Johnson and Professor Vincent Egan on “personality and attitudes”, which many of you were kind enough to help out with. Gareth has written us a summary of their research and what they were looking for as a way of saying thank-you for helping and also to let you know what it was all about!

Forensic psychologists have learned that personality traits are a key predictor of antisocial and violent behaviour. Evaluating personality underlies the accurate prediction of risk behaviour in offenders. Traditional demographic variables (age, sex, ethnicity, socio-economic status) are too broad for use with individual offenders since they are such a small section of the population. Environmental factors (e.g. where one lives) are mediated through the individual, so it is important to focus on the specific personality and individual differences that offenders have.

Extremism is a form of antisocial behaviour that is less well understood. It is not ’caused’ by poverty or ignorance, and we know little about how personality might influence the development of extremist attitudes. In our pilot study, a set of extremist attitudes were used to develop an Ideological Opinions Scale, derived from an analysis of 933 Hezbollah Militia interviews that looked for common themes. The attitudes appeared to cluster around four dimensions: fanatical zealousness, alienated alternativism, dogmatic individualism, and destructive terrorism. Additional research is required before using this scale in practice, because some of the attitudes appeared to show strong gender differences.

Gareth Hagger-Johnson is a lecturer in public health at the Leeds Institute of Health Sciences at Leeds University.
Vincent Egan is a professor of forensic psychology in the School of Psychology at Leicester University.

Gareth has also cheekily asked us to link to his JustGiving page. He’s running a half marathon in aid of UNICEF – any donations would be much appreciated!