Human capital—encompassing cognitive skills and personality traits—is critical for labor market success, yet the personality component remains difficult to measure at scale. Leveraging advances in artificial intelligence and comprehensive LinkedIn microdata, we extract the Big 5 personality traits from facial images of 96,000 MBA graduates, and demonstrate that this novel “Photo Big 5” predicts school rank, compensation, job seniority, industry choice, job transitions, and career advancement. Using administrative records from top-tier MBA programs, we find that the Photo Big 5 exhibits only modest correlations with cognitive measures like GPA and standardized test scores, yet offers comparable incremental predictive power for labor outcomes. Unlike traditional survey-based personality measures, the Photo Big 5 is readily accessible and potentially less susceptible to manipulation, making it suitable for wide adoption in academic research and hiring processes. However, its use in labor market screening raises ethical concerns regarding statistical discrimination and individual autonomy.
That is from a new paper by Marius Guenzel, Shimon Kogan, Marina Niessner, and Kelly Shue. I read through the paper and was impressed. Of course since this is machine learning, I can’t tell you what the five traits are in any simple descriptive sense. But this is somewhat of a comeback for physiognomy, which even DeepSeek tells me is a pseudoscience. Via tekl, a fine-looking fellow if there ever was one.
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