This initial post profiles the fan bases of four popular movies: The Lord of the Rings, Sex and the City, The Notebook and Fight Club.  Each movie’s fan profile highlights how its fans differ from everyone else.  Sex and the City fans, for instance, are 1.4 times more likely to be moody, and 1.7 times more likely to value power.  Yeah, they’re complicated.. just like the four women the movie revolves around.  Fight Club fans, as you will see, are also more likely to have traits embodied by the movie’s characters.

Please keep in mind that these fan profiles are statistics, not stereotypes.  A more accurate, less fun headline would be “Fight Club’s Facebook Fans Are More Likely To Be Sophisticated, Thrill-Seeking Non-Conformists”.  There are plenty of unsophisticated, conventional Fight Club fans out there. We can’t all be like Tyler Durden.

Lord of the Rings

Considering that the The Lord of the Rings movies are some of the most popular of all time, you might expect fans of the trilogy to be pretty normal, or statistically average.  While this is mostly true, the fan profile highlights a few key differences — some predictable, others more revealing.  Predictably, LOTR fans are more likely than others to be imaginative and to value tradition.  An immersive fantasy world requires some imagination to appreciate, and the story’s themes are about as traditional as they come.

Fans are also 25% more likely to value conformity, which is again in line with the films. But I suspect there’s another factor at play.  Liking a movie (or anything) on Facebook is often a two-part decision: 1) how much do I actually like the movie, and 2) what will Facebook-liking this movie say about me to others?  (For some people, #2 operates semi- or even un-consciously.  For others, it’s very consciously the most important factor.  If you’re sincerely skeptical about #2’s existence at all, please read Hugo Liu’s Social Network Profiles As Taste Performances, or subscribe to this blog, we’ll write about this topic in depth another time.  In the meantime, ask your friends about it, you’ll be surprised.)  Given the extreme popularity of the LOTR movies, Facebook-liking them says in a small way that you’re not that different.  People who value conformity should be comfortable with this signal, perhaps even welcome it.  For non-conformists, on the other hand, it’s a deterrent.

The least predictable part of the LOTR fan profile, at least for me, is the set of relatively high scores on all five moral foundations we measure.  But in hindsight this makes sense.  LOTR is fundamentally a story of good vs. evil, and there is no subtlety about who is on which side.  This kind of black and white morality play should appeal to those with strong moral convictions, especially when good wins over evil.

The Lord of the Rings Fan Profile

Based on 5,674 fans.  The figures are likelihood ratios, for instance LOTR fans are 1.2 times (20%) more likely than others to score high on imagination as measured by our psychology survey.

	Personality Imaginative (1.2x)			Values Tradition (1.4x) Conformity (1.25x)
	Morals No Harm (1.25x) Fairness (1.3x) Group Loyalty (1.4x) Purity (1.4x) Respect for Authority (1.3x)			Politics Conservative (1.3x) Libertarian (1.4x)
	Demographics Male (1.2x) 18-23 (1.45x) 24-29 (1.25x) Midwest (1.25x)			Education & Income Some College (1.2x) Professional Degree (1.35x)

Other Standout Characteristics Religiosity: devoutly religious (1.4x).  Professional Values: morality (1.4x).  Interests: books and literature (1.2x), computers and electronics (1.25x), religion and spirituality (1.2x), science (1.2x), video games (1.55x).
 

Sex and the City

The Sex and the City movie is inseparable from the TV show, both of which revolve around four New York City professional women in their 30s and 40s.  Carrie Bradshaw, pictured to the left, is the narrator and embodiment of the series.  A writer and member of the New York glitterati, she enjoys her independence, continues to date well into her 30s, lives in a one-room apartment and uses her oven for storage.  She feels lonely at times, however, and can’t wait to find “ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other” love. All four of the women are a complicated mix of ambition and femininity, allowing the series to dramatize issues surrounding the changing roles and set of expectations for the modern woman.

The Sex and the City fan profile suggests that many fans relate closely to the characters and, in the case of the TV series, may even live vicariously through them. Like the ladies of the show, fans tend to be extraverted, diligent and competitive, all strong traits.  But fans are also moody, i.e. more emotional and easily upset than others.  This is an unusual mix of traits, a pattern that repeats itself across all of our measurement categories.  People who value power and achievement are less likely to value pleasure, and vice versa, but Sex and the City fans tend to value all three. Professionally fans are more likely to value independence and respect but also team work and relationships.  And their standout interests defy gender patterns: business, fashion, finance, shopping, etc.  They’re a multi-faceted bunch, just like the show’s characters.

Sex and the City Fan Profile

Based on 624 fans.  ”NOT” is used to identify the low extreme of a scale, for instance the “NOT Tradition (1.7x)” figure means that Sex and the City fans are 1.7 times more likely to score low on Tradition.

	Personality Extraverted (1.2x) Competitive (1.2x) Diligent (1.2x) Moody (1.4x)			Values Power (1.65x) Achievement (1.5x) Pleasure (1.5x) Stimulation (1.2x) NOT Universalism (1.2x) NOT Benevolence (1.2x) NOT Tradition (1.7x)
	Morals Not enough data			Politics Liberal/Progressive (1.3x)
	Demographics Female (1.7x) 24-29 (1.2x) 30-39 (1.3x) Urban (1.3x) Parent of 1 Child (1.4x)			Education & Income Associate Degree (1.3x) $25-50k (1.3x) $100-200k (1.2x)

Other Standout Characteristics Religiosity: somewhat religious (1.3x).  Professional Values: independence (1.3x), relationships (1.25x), respect (1.35x), team work (1.2), work ethic (1.3).  Interests: business (1.3x), dance (1.5x), dating (1.4x), fashion (1.85x), finance (1.2x), movies (1.2x), nightlife (1.7x), shopping (2.1x), travel (1.3x), TV (1.4x).
 
 

The Notebook

I’ve not seen The Notebook.  It’s a story of separated lovers that most consider a cliched tearjerker.  Some are repelled by the sap, others acknowledge it but consider the characters so endearing and/or the overall story so touching that the sap is worth it, or even a good thing in its own right.  (Check out the Rotten Tomatoes page for detailed opinions.)  The fan profile suggests that personality is a particularly important determinant of which side a person falls.  I wonder if people with those four personality traits are prone to sap in general — the tearjerker personality type?  Worth looking into..

Of all the results, I find the conservative/religious leaning the most intriguing.  Is it simply that liberals and the non-religious are more skeptical, or is there something ideological about this movie that I will never see?

The Notebook Fan Profile

Based on 2,987 fans.

	Personality Sociable (1.35x) Compassionate (1.4x) Diligent (1.3x) Unintellectual (1.25x)			Values NOT Self-Direction (1.4x)
	Morals Purity (1.2x) NOT Respect for Authority (1.2x)			Politics Conservative (1.4x)
	Demographics Female (1.8x) 18-23 (1.7x) 24-29 (1.3x) Rural (1.2x) South (1.2x) Midwest (1.3x)			Education & Income Associate Degree (1.3x)

Other Standout Characteristics Religiosity: devoutly religious (1.3x), somewhat religious (1.2x).  Professional Values: morality (1.25x), order (1.4x), relationships (1.35x), respect (1.3x).  Interests: dance (1.55x), dating (1.4x), family (1.3x), fashion (1.5x), nightlife (1.35x), shopping (1.7x).
 
 

Fight Club

For those (hypothetical people) who don’t know the basic premise of Fight Club: an insomniac who’s bored at work meets the rebellious Tyler Durden, shown to the left, and together they form a underground club for men frustrated with societal conventions.  They vent their rage by fighting each other and eventually direct it at society itself, when Fight Club graduates to “Project Mayhem”.  Netflix describes the critically-acclaimed film as “witty, mind-bending, gritty, dark, violent”.

The fan profile reads almost like a psychological assessment of the Durden character, the primary subject of fan fascination.  (There’s a popular blog called What Would Tyler Durden Do.)  A few pointers as you look it over.  ”Competitive” may not sound Durden-esque until you realize that it refers to a confrontational and manipulative kind of competitiveness.  The “stimulation” value refers to the love of excitement, novelty and challenge in life.. in other words, the thrill-seeker’s raison d’etre.  Lastly, Fight Club fans score lower than others on all five morals that we measure, making them fairly morally permissive as a group, at least when compared to others.  What would Tyler Durden do, indeed.

Fight Club Fan Profile

Based on 3,666 fans.  Again, “NOT” is used to identify the low extreme of a measurement, for instance the “NOT Group Loyalty (1.5x)” figure means that Fight Club fans are 1.5 times more likely to score low on the Group Loyalty moral scale.

	Personality Competitive (1.3x) Careless (1.3x) Sophisticated (1.45x)			Values Pleasure (1.4x) Stimulation (1.4x) Self-direction (1.5x) NOT Tradition (1.5x) NOT Conformity (1.7x) NOT Security (1.5x)
	Morals NOT No Harm (1.4x) NOT Fairness (1.25x) NOT Group Loyalty (1.5x) NOT Purity (1.5x) NOT Respect for Authority (1.4x)			Politics Liberal/Progressive (1.3x) Libertarian (1.8x) Cynical/Alienated (1.8x)
	Demographics Male (1.4x) 18-23 (1.5x) 24-29 (1.25x) Northeast (1.2x)			Education & Income Some College (1.2x) Under $25k (1.3x) Over $200k (1.3x)

Other Standout Characteristics Religiosity: neither religious nor spiritual (1.7x). Professional Values: creativity (1.6x), innovation (1.6x), intelligence (1.6x).  Interests: the arts (1.2x), automobiles (1.3x), computers and electronics (1.35x), dating (1.3x), internet (1.2x), movies (1.2x), nightlife (1.6x), science (1.35x), video games (1.7x).

We Like Movies Like Us

These four fan profiles suggest that fans of a given movie are (on the whole) different from others in meaningful, often predictable ways.  In particular, it seems that we tend to like movies that are like us, whose characters are like us and whose worldview we share.  The MyType team calculated dozens of other fan profiles and this pattern popped up again and again.

But not always.  And I don’t mean “not always” in the statistical exception sense, i.e. that just because Fight Club fans are more likely to be non-conformists does not mean all Fight Club fans are non-conformist.  That goes without saying.  I mean that sometimes a movie’s fan base is statistically more likely to be different from the movie’s characters and/or worldview.  For example, though the movie Titanic portrays strength, the 896 Titanic fans in our user base are 25% more likely to be insecure. Are insecure people more likely to be drawn to films with strong characters? Perhaps, though I expect the relationship will be more complex. Either way, we’ll look into it.

Bottom line, while similarity seems to be one of the primary factors drawing fans to a movie, it’s not the only one, and in the case of certain movies not even the dominant one. As you would expect, the relationship between movies and their fans is multi-faceted and complex. This brief blog post is just scratching the surface. I’d like to explore some of this complexity in depth by diving deeper on a single movie, ideally one recognized as enigmatic. Napoleon Dynamite seems like a good choice. What do you think?

Fine Print For Nerds

This document provides a full description of the methodology for calculating Facebook Fan profiles.  We’d like to give a shout out to Google Refine for making it so easy to run a series of sophisticated string-matching algorithms, which comes in handy when working with messy Facebook profile info.

To mitigate sample bias, the set of over 17,000 American respondents was normalized to reflect the age, gender, location and distribution of the general US population between the ages of 18 and 60. MyType's methodology is explained in detail in the full report.

Turnover Within the Tea Party

In keeping with a recent Public Research Institute poll, MyType’s survey data indicate that devoutly religious conservatives are the fastest growing segment within the Tea Party.  From early August to mid-October, Tea Party support among religious conservatives climbed from 47.4% to 58.5%, a relative increase of over 23%.  During the same period, opposition among religious conservatives dropped from 9.9% to a negligible 0.5%.

Libertarian supporters, on the other hand, appear to be leaving the movement.  Between late September and mid-October, support among libertarians dropped from 46.7% to 37.8%, a relative decline of over 19%.  During the same period, opposition among libertarians climbed from 11.1% to 16.0%.

Tea Party Identity Crisis

Though religious conservative and libertarian Tea Party supporters may seem similar on the surface, their underlying values, morals and personalities are fundamentally different.  The table below highlights some of the more distinctive characteristics of members within each group.  Both tend to be white, well-educated, middle or upper middle class parents, and are more likely to live in the South.  Religious conservative supporters, however, are often down-to-earth, traditional, and morally charged, while libertarian supporters tend to be intellectual, self-directed and morally permissive. Much more detailed psychographic and demographic information is available in the full report, including the numbers behind this table.

This table highlights notable tendencies in the two groups of supporters, not exclusive definitions. For instance, while there are religious conservative supporters who are interested in science, on the whole this groups stands out for its high percentage of people interested in religion and family.

It seems unlikely that these distinct groups can remain united under one political banner.  And indeed, the rise of religious conservatives and decline of libertarians within the Tea Party indicate a brewing identity crisis for the movement.  The Tea Party protests began with the core libertarian values still listed on the party’s official website: fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets.  Notably absent is any mention of social issues.  Recently, however, prominent political candidates and public figures affiliated with the party have made headlines with their statements on social issues, including speaking out against abortion and homosexuality and questioning the separation of church and state.  While this seems to be attracting religious conservatives to the Tea Party, it’s likely driving away socially permissive libertarians and others who originally joined the movement for its focus on scaling back government.  Involving the government in moral prescription is expanding its influence, not scaling back.  Karl Denninger, widely credited as one of the founders of the Tea Party, may have become the spokesman of Tea Party defectors when he recently denounced the movement, saying it has been hijacked by people obsessed with “guns, gays and God”.

Given the religious conservatives’ relative strength in numbers, the current trend will likely continue.  Already they comprise over 23.5% of Tea Party supporters, compared to 17.0% for libertarians.  A little over a year after the birth of the Tea Party, libertarians and other proponents of small government – no moral strings attached – may need to start yet another movement.

About the Survey

In the largest study of its kind, from August 5th through October 18th, 2010, 17,654 Americans were asked for their opinion of the Tea Party while completing MyType’s online psychographic surveys.  To mitigate sample bias, the dataset was normalized via stratified weighting to reflect the age, gender, location and personality distribution of 18-60 year old Americans.  Of the 1,440 strata – representing every unique combination of gender, age range, census division and personality type – less than 5% needed a weight of 4 or higher, and less than 0.4% of respondents needed a weight of 10 or higher.  Most of these underrepresented strata were male, 50-60 year olds from various census regions with one of a few personality types that are unlikely to take surveys.

The normalized sample resembles the racial distribution of the general US population with the exception of African Americans, who comprise 12.7% of the US population but make up only 5.2% of the sample compared to.  Households with above average income are slightly overrepresented, and those with low incomes are slightly underrepresented.  The normalized sample is also moderately more educated than the general US population, with a higher proportion of college and postgraduate degree holders.  For detailed data on how the sample compares to the general population, survey methodology, and all data provided in this article, see the full report.

The Study

From March through May of 2010 MyType surveyed over 20,000 of its users on Facebook about Apple’s iPad to reveal the personality traits, values, demographics and interests that drive differences in opinion about the new tablet computer.  After weighting the responses to reflect the composition of the general internet-using US population, at least between the ages of 13 and 49 (we need more Beatles’ era users), we were happy to discover that our numbers were in line with results from a recent Forrestor survey.

Opinions about the iPad weighted to reflect the composition of the general internet using population in the US between the ages of 13 and 49

The first number that jumps out is the 54% that simply aren’t interested in the iPad, i.e. the dark blue and green slices in the pie chart.  As would be expected with such a common opinion, a lack of interest in the iPad does not say much about who you are.  The real psychographic gold was hiding in the extreme segments: the 3% who either already bought one or plan to buy one very soon (Owners) and the 11% who criticized it as a silly product (Critics).

Selfish Elites, Independent Geeks

Apple’s marketing tends to feature the iPad as a sexy leisure device for watching movies, reading books, browsing the internet and flipping through family photos.  Despite this, we found that people interested in business and finance are much more likely to be iPad Owners than those interested in movies, music, books and literature, the arts, the internet, video games, shopping, food and drink, nightlife or family.  While this seems at odds with Apple’s marketing, it makes sense in the context of the Owners’ general psychographic profile.  iPad Owners are an elite bunch.  They’re wealthy, highly educated and sophisticated.  They value power and achievement much more than others.  They’re also selfish, scoring low on measures of kindness and altruism.  As can be seen in the chart below, we found that people with all or most of these qualities, whom we call selfish elites, are roughly 6 times more likely to be an iPad Owner than the average person.

Roughly 18% of selfish elites are iPad Owners, making them up to 6 times more likely to own an iPad than the average person. Note that we include people who plan to buy an iPad soon in the "iPad Owner" category. Independent geeks are up to 3 times more likely than the average person to be a critic of the iPad.

iPad critics, on the other hand, tend to be independent geeks.  They prize self-direction, shun conformity, and are interested in video games, computers, electronics, science and the internet.  One of the strongest single indicators of being an iPad Critic is a preference for the Linux (a do-it-yourself operating system for super geeks) over Windows or Macintosh.  Even Mac users are more likely to criticize the product than Windows users, the PC population being the least geeky of all.  If at this point you’re imagining the classic young male geek, your stereotyped imagination is right.  iPad Critics do tend to be young men.  To add even more color: they tend to have no children and little interest in family.

Why are selfish elites adopting the iPad and independent geeks ridiculing it?  We only have data on the who, not the why, but I’ll offer some possible explanations, starting with the geeks.

It Takes a Specific Type of Geek to Hate on the iPad

It may seem odd that geeks are so critical of the iPad.  Aren’t geeks the de facto early adopters of all new technology products?  Well, it’s complicated.  As you can see from the chart above, our independent geeks are in fact more likely than average to be iPad Owners.  But why are they even more disproportionately critical?  I think it becomes more clear when you zero in on the exact type of geek we’re talking about, since different types of geek like and identify with different kinds of technology.  Social Foursquare power users and solo Linux junkies, for instance, may both call themselves geeks but beyond that they won’t have very much in common.  MyType’s data indicate that the geeks critical of the iPad are more of the Linux junkie variety: independent, hardcore technology lovers.  Think of them as the original, “pure” technology geeks, before geekery gained its mainstream appeal and “social media” entered the lexicon.  These guys (and some gals) are known for their strong desire to be in control of their gadgets, compelling them to learn code and tinker with hardware.  They’re impressed by technology breakthroughs and advances in speed, storage, and other quantitative qualities.  They love to be on the edge of technology, experiencing these advances firsthand.

Now consider the iPad from this hardcore geek perspective.  Tablet computers have been around for many years.  Touchscreen technology is not new.  I’ll let Darren Murph’s assessment on Engadget tell the rest:

I can’t begin to explain how disappointing this device is in the sense of being a usable computer. There’s a 1GHz CPU in there that can’t even be used for multitasking. There’s no camera for video chatting. There’s no way to watch a Flash video and chat within an IRC client at the same time. There’s not even a way to connect a USB device to this without paying Apple extra for an adapter. The iPad is remarkably limited in scope and functionality, and for no good reason. A netbook can run circles around this in terms of actually getting work done, and if I want to enjoy multimedia, I’ll carry around something that can fit in my pocket. As I mentioned, you’ll say I’m just missing the point, but this thing does absolutely nothing for me in its current iteration.

When you think about it this way, the tablet seems like little more than an oversized iPhone.  So when it’s heralded as a breakthrough by the media and craved by consumers everywhere, our independent geeks are predictably incredulous.  Given the iPad’s promising march towards mainstream adoption, their independent personalities make criticizing the device an almost instinctive reaction.

Criticism of Apple has become an almost instinctive reaction for this group as well.  The company has a growing reputation for intentionally limiting user choice.  It chooses which apps it will allow users to have access to.  To even join club you must buy an Apple device, which offers few customization options.  It’s a completely closed platform.  This grates independent geeks the wrong way.  They need maximum control over their gadgets.

Bashing the iPad is, in a way, an identity statement for independent geeks.  As a mainstream, closed-platform device whose major claim to fame is ease of use and sex appeal, the iPad is everything that they are not.

The Power Tool for Selfish Elites

What do selfish elites see in the iPad that others don’t?  Perhaps nothing.  Five hundred dollars is a lot to spend on an untested product, maybe it’s just a matter of affordability.  The data, however, show that people who have all the traits of the selfish elite except wealth are much more likely than the average non-wealthy person to wish they can afford an iPad.  Also, the upper class as a whole is more likely to be undecided about the iPad or simply not want it.  It’s only when we narrow in on multiple elite traits, including sophistication, achievement, education and wealth, that we see a strong likelihood of being an iPad Owner.

So “elite” is in this case not simply a synonym for “rich”, but more specifically refers to a constellation of characteristics that defines a leadership class, including intellectuals, political influencers, business executives, and so on (as well as young, rising members of this class).  These high performance professionals tend to be screen-bound workaholics.  It’s no wonder, then, that they flock to a device that makes it incredibly convenient to bring screen work with you, even to traditionally screen-less places like the plane, the bed and the bathroom.  A Sybase study found that the number one reason consumers would use the iPad is for working on the go.

And the selfishness?  It is plausible to me that the selfish are more likely than non-selfish elites to jump on the opportunity to take work and the web deeper into their lives.  The unselfish are less likely to be single-mindedly ambitious and more likely to be attuned to the needs of their families and other private, offline pursuits.  Also keep in mind that all of these personality correlations are independent.  Perhaps simply the willingness to shell out hundreds of dollars for an unproven personal device correlates with selfishness, regardless of whether we’re talking about elites or average people.

The characteristics of a product’s early adopters define its image, or at least make a strong statement about how the product is perceived.  The results of MyType’s iPad Opinion profile suggest that the tablet computer is seen more as a power tool for elites than as the newest gadget for technology geeks.

A Handful of Other Interesting Results

Our iPad Opinion Profile is full of charts focused on specific personality traits, demographics, and offbeat measures like “biggest sin”.  Here’s a sample with bonus off-the-cuff commentary.

The iPad Sin

We asked survey respondents to identify which of the Seven Sins they’re most susceptible to.  iPad Owners are guilty of the two sins of indulgence: lust and gluttony.  Is the iPad itself an indulgence?  This fits with the Owner’s “selfish elite” profile.

Religious People are “In the Know” on the iPad

While we’re in religious territory, here’s a surprising finding: of all levels of religiosity, from devoutly religious to non-religious, devoutly religious people are most likely to know what the iPad is.  Do people talk about the new tablet at church?  What explains this?

Ethnic Minorities are also “In the Know”

Koreans and Chinese in the US are over 8 times and 5 times more likely, respectively, to know what the iPad is and US residents of both Middle Eastern and African descent are more than twice as likely.

Parents Love the iPad

Parents are much more likely to be iPad Owners than non-parents.  Parents are also more likely to not even know what the iPad is.  Maybe this is a good advertising opportunity for Apple.

If you want more, check out the full report.

Comments on Methodology

Bottom Line MyType’s data, which can be seen in the full report, was collected and normalized with reasonable rigor.  Any interpretation of the data, however, is clearly subjective.  MyType made an honest effort to tease out the main themes of the data, but feel free to come to your own conclusions.

Data Collection We inserted the iPad question into our psychology quizzes, so respondents were not self-selecting based on their desire to answer a question about the iPad.  We use a number of methodologies to eliminate bad respondents, described in the full report.

Data Measures For demographics we used pretty standard questions, many modeled after the census.  For psychological traits we used Colin DeYoung’s Big Five Aspect Scales and Schalom Schwartz’s Values Survey, both well-respected instruments in academic psychology.

Sample Normalization We normalized our data to reflect the age, gender, and personality distribution of the US (for people ages 13-49, we did not have enough data for people 50 and over).  Our respondents were naturally well distributed across geographic regions, income brackets, and other important demographic measures.

Confidence Virtually all of our hundreds of correlations were significant at p < .05, and a vast majority were significant at p < .01.

Selfish Elite and Independent Geek Population Segments These segments were created by selecting only people who matched multiple profile characteristics.  Selfish elites, for instance, had to be unkind and/or unaltruistic, have a household income of $100k or more, have a college degree, score high on power and/or achievement seeking, score high on sophistication, etc.  Similar multi-dimensional profiling was done for independent geeks.

More detail on MyType’s methodology can be found at the bottom of the full report.

2008 US Presidential Candidates Barack Obama and John McCain

In the weeks leading up to the United States’ 2008 general election, we ran a poll asking how our users planned to vote. We wanted to see if a user’s personality type correlated with their voting intentions. Did Obama’s idealistic message of change win the support of Idealists? Were guardians reassured by McCain’s views on national security?

First, about the data: Over 2000 people took the poll including about 400 or so International users, who overwhelmingly support Obama. However, the bulk of this analysis relates to the 1526 valid American responses.

First, let’s sort those responses by personality type. We’ll look at the four temperaments to get a sense of any broad trends: Idealists (xNFx), Rationals (xNTx), Guardians (xSxJ), and Artisans (xSxP). These  major personality categories represent the most profound differences in how people see the world and choose to act.

Breakdown by Temperament of the Poll's Respondents compared to the entire MyType Community

Here we see a breakdown of poll respondents by temperament, compared to that of the whole MyType community. A quick glance reveals that our poll respondents match the proportions of the community in only two of the four temperaments. A disproportionately high number of Rationals and a disproportionately low number of Idealists responded to our poll.

Now let’s look at the responses as they compare to the actual election returns. Here, we put our 1526 American respondents next to 129 million American voters:

Distribution of votes in MyType Poll compared to Actual Election Returns

The poll data shows less support for McCain among our users than in the general public. Also, we see that “Other” candidates are more popular among responses from MyType users than they are in the actual vote totals. You could say that Obama “won” our poll with 53.8% of valid American responses. His margin of victory was much larger in our poll (more than 20 percentage points) than in the real election.Let’s take a closer look at Obama’s support with a breakdown by temperament:

Breakdown of Obama's supporters in our poll according to Temperament

If there were no relationship between temperament and voting intention, we would expect to find roughly the same distribution of the temperaments among each candidate’s supporters. However, the above chart shows this is not the case: While Rationals and Artisans each support Obama in proportions close to their rate of response to the poll, Idealists are overrepresented and Guardians are underrepresented among Obama voters.

What about McCain’s support?

Breakdown of McCain's support in our poll according to respondents' Temperament

Once again, we see that the temperaments are not evenly distributed among McCain’s supporters: Guardians are overrepresented dramatically, while Idealists and Rationals are underrepresented among McCain voters. Artisans support McCain in a similar proportion to their response to the poll.

Let’s look at the remaining voters, those who made up the “Other” category. Really, this group could be split: in our poll, we allowed respondents to choose from four additional options: Bob Barr, Ralph Nader, Other, and Undecided. Of the 252 responses supporting one of these choices, only 45 were undecided and a full 207 voted for third party candidates, comprising 13.6% of all poll responses.

A majority of these votes went for the Libertarian candidate, Bob Barr. Here is a breakdown of his support by temperament:

Breakdown of Bob Barr's support among poll respondents according to Temperament

We see that Idealists and Guardians are underrepresented. Rationals, on the other hand, are dramatically overrepresented among Barr voters. An amazing 63 of the 399 Rational poll respondents voted for this candidate.

This data shows us how many of you voted, but it does not tell us why. In this section, I’ll speculate a bit about possible explanations for what we found.

The responses indicate less support for McCain than one expects from the popular vote totals. The Facebook community, however, is relatively young, and younger voters tend to choose more Liberal or less Conservative candidates.

We found that Idealists are overrepresented among Obama supporters, while Guardians are overrepresented among McCain supporters. These findings are interesting, but not all that shocking. Both candidates received strong support from the temperaments that tend to value the characteristics that each came to represent.

Here is a graph showing our poll’s Obama supporters by their specific personality type, magnified to highlight the pattern we found:

A magnified view of Obama's supporters in our poll. Note the strong support from Idealists (blue).

Obama was associated with ideas of change, Liberalism, and the future. Naturally, Idealists (the blue column above) connected with the grassroots/personal nature of the campaign and its message. McCain was associated with traditional values, Conservatism, duty, and responsibility. Guardians responded to the message of caution and obligation expressed by his campaign. This is shown clearly in a similar graph of his support, again magnified to highlight what we found:

A magnified view of McCain's supporters in our poll. Note the strong support from Guardians (orange).

In addition to the trends among our major candidates’ supporters, we found that Rationals made up a great portion of Libertarian Bob Barr’s support, as well as that of other third party candidates. Perhaps Rationals, calculating as they are, can best justify voting for an underdog.

Artisans represent the smallest group of respondents and the overall MyType community. They did not appear to support any candidate(s) in an especially high or low proportion. It is possible that, being the temperament thought to live in the moment, Artisans directed their attention beyond politics, to admittedly more exciting areas of life.

What is your impression? How would you explain these results? Tell us your thoughts about this analysis, as well as any ideas you have for future polls.