Facebook 'likes' can reveal your secrets

- Your Facebook "likes" might be revealing more than you know about your private life. It is possible to predict potentially private traits such as a person's sexual orientation, political leanings, religion, intelligence, emotional stability and even if they abuse drugs or alcohol, just by analyzing their Facebook likes, according to a new study out of the University of Cambridge. Liking something on Facebook is a simple, almost mindless way to pass time on the social networking site, which says it has more than a billion users worldwide. With one click, people can "like" pages -- for brands, public figures, memes, music and groups -- as well as articles, photos or status updates from their friends. But that quick action can be a powerful statement. "Facebook likes have a meaning that we can use to understand the psychology behind what people do," says David Stillwell, a co-author of the study. Researchers looked at the Facebook profiles and likes, along with surveys and personality tests, for 58,466 individuals. Using that data, they developed a model that predicts personal attributes from Facebook likes with impressive accuracy. It has the best luck categorizing people as Caucasian or African-American (95% accuracy), followed by gender, male sexuality, Democratic or Republican leanings, and detecting Christians and Muslims. One of more unusual categories was whether a person's parents had split before they turned 21, which had a relatively low 60% level of accuracy (still high enough to benefit advertisers, noted the researchers). These people were more more likely to like statements about relationships, such as "If I'm with you then I'm with you. I don't want anybody else," and "I'm sorry I love you." "It gives us a poignant insight into the effects that parental breakup has on children even after they grow up," says Stillwell. The likes themselves are a combination of obvious and baffling. Liking "Kathy Griffin," "Juicy Couture," or the musical "Wicked" were found to be strong indicators that a man was gay, while liking sports-related topics, "Bruce Lee" and "Being Confused After Waking Up From Naps" were more popular with straight men, according to the the study. A person's Facebook likes can also be used to predict intelligence, say the researchers. Liking "The Daily Show," "science," "Morgan Freeman's Voice" and the mysterious "Curly Fries" indicates someone is highly intelligent. Lower intelligence was suggested by likes for "Clark Griswold," "Harley-Davidson" and "Bret Michaels," according to the study. Likes for "beerpong," "Chris Tucker" and "cheerleading" were strong predictors of an extrovert while "role playing games," "Anime" and "Voltaire" pointed to introverted personality types. "Kurt Donald Cobain" and "Vampires Everywhere" indicated neurotic personalities, "Wes Anderson" and "serial killer" were liked by spontaneous people, and competitive types liked "Sun Tzu" and "I hate everyone."