Psychometric Profiling for Reddit — a Case Study
Running ads on Reddit
Reddit, termed as the front page of the internet, has been around since 2005. Unlike other social media platforms, which are user-based, Reddit is a community-driven platform. Reddit doesn’t require any personal data, and most of its users are anonymous. Without personal data, deploying targeted ads is a bit difficult. Granted, Reddit has its coin system, where the users can buy these coins, which could be used to purchase awards to reward users who add valuable content to the community. But the revenue generated through this method is minuscule as compared to running ads. How can then a platform like Reddit run targeted ads?
The answer is psychometric profiling. Psychometrics of a user defines their behavior which consequently defines their purchasing ability. Facebook uses psychometric profiling rigorously to generate tags for its users, which are helpful in micro-targeting. Facebook also knows the demographic data of its users, which, combined with the psychometric data, becomes a potent tool.
Well then, how does psychometric profiling work on Reddit? Although it’s not openly published, we could guess the general procedure to some degree. Let’s first understand what psychometric profiling is.
Psychometric Profiling.
The most popular model for psychometric profiling is the five-factor model, AKA the OCEAN model. These five factors, often used for personality analytics, are -
- Openness
- Conscientiousness
- Extraversion
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism
Openness indicated the willingness to try new things. People who score high on openness are more likely to indulge in unknown activities. Conscientiousness is related to impulse control and organizational behavior. Extraversion gives insights into whether a person feels energized by activities and people or ideas and thoughts. Agreeable individuals are more cooperative and less competitive. The general opinion of the crowd likely more influences them. Finally, those who exhibit high neuroticism are more susceptible to mental health issues like anxiety, overthinking, and depression.
Thinking in terms of marketing or neuromarketing, if you will, these five traits can loosely indicate the consumer behavior of a person. For example, a person with high openness score and less agreeableness score is more likely to try out the new battle royale game. Someone with very high conscientiousness may not be susceptible to ads but might be interested in attending a webinar. A neurotic person may be relatively more interested in art, craft, and music.
Understanding the psyche of Reddit
How can this model be incorporated into Reddit? As I said, Reddit is a community-driven social media platform. Each community shares a common interest. These communities are called subreddits and are denoted by r/{subreddit name}. For example, the subreddit r/nosleep is about fictional horror stories, r/aww is about posting cute pictures, r/django gathers Django developers to discuss the Django web framework. The user can join these subreddits. Thus, subscribed subreddit becomes an important metric to understand user behavior.
When a user creates a subreddit, Reddit asks them a series of questions. It includes naming the subreddit, describing it in less than 500 words, and choosing a genre. Reddit then generates the initial tags for the subreddit. These tags can be categorized not only for psychometric data but also for demographic data. Let’s consider r/India. Although it’s a place for Indians to share posts, it primarily comments on the right-wing government. Thus one could infer that r/India subscribers are mainly Indians and liberals. An independent liberal newspaper might want to market its product to this community. Reddit also takes input from the users regularly to understand a subreddit better. It does so by asking binary questions below the post from a subreddit.
Defining Metrics
Objectively defining psychometric metrics is not a simple task. It isn’t easy to quantify personality traits. Even a straightforward questionnaire is not enough to cover the complete personality spectrum of a person! Thus to model personality traits mathematically, we need to use an iterative approach.
Thus I came up with something called the personality pentagon. Each vortex of this pentagon would correspond to a personality trait from the OCEAN model. The centroid of this pentagon would be the reference point. The distance from the centroid to the vortex would define the individual’s score in that particular trait. This distance may be anything between 0 to 10, where 0 would indicate the lowest score and ten would show the highest score. Naturally, five would mean a neutral score.
Each subreddit would also have its personality pentagon based on the tags generated by the algorithm. Reddit often asks its users questions about the community to understand the subreddit more. Based on this input, the subreddit tags can be further refined. Now, we can use the subreddit personality pentagon to modify its subscribers’ psychometric profile depending upon the time they spend on that subreddit.
Implementation
To understand the model better, let’s go through an example. Let’s say a guy named Tron has just made his Reddit profile. Reddit will first ask him to choose a few subreddits of his liking. These subreddits are generally vague and don’t reveal much, but it’s something to start with. Tron chooses r/dogs, r/hiking, and r/cybersecurity. Let’s say the personality pentagon value for each of these communities is -
Taking the mean, we would get a reference pentagon -
Tron would start with a personality pentagon, with each value being five initially. This pentagon will then be updated using the reference polygon using the formula -
new value = initial value + multiplication factor*(reference value-initial value)
To find the optimal multiplication value, we need to conduct user interviews and user research. After we get the new polygon, we can update it regularly with the same formula used above, except now the multiplication factor will also be a function of time spent on that subreddit.
Advertisers can then determine their target group based on these psychometric profiles and the demographic data acquired through the subscribed subreddits. For example, a travel company could target users who score high in openness and extraversion. A meditation app could target users who score high in neuroticism.
Ethical responsibility
Psychometric profiling is a destructive tool if it’s in the wrong hands. It has the potential to instigate psychological warfare. It’s crucial that the data stays protected and no third party gets access to the same. In 2016 Cambridge Analytica used the Facebook data of millions of Americans to start an extremist movement. It targeted racist and misogynist communities and provided a way for them to vent out their feelings in the name of freedom.
Data is the power in the world of algorithms. And with great power comes great responsibility.