Choosing a profile picture is no easy task -- many of us will agonise over the prospect for what seems like an eternity before settling on an image that we think best represents us.
But a recent study has revealed that for all the agonising we do, there's just one thing that dictates the photo we'll eventually settle on: our personality.
The researchers chose 66,000 Twitter users and determined their personality type based on the nature of their tweets, before looking into how their profile pictures corresponded with that of users who had the same personality type.
Users fell into one of five personality types: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
Users displaying openness -- who are characterised by their intellectual and visual prowess -- had the most artistic profile pictures, but their images also lacked emotion, colour and were more likely to have a "negative" feel.
Conscientious types, who are orderly and self-disciplined by nature, are most likely to have display photos that only feature themselves, and are more "colourful, natural and bright" than other personalities -- as well as happier.
The profile pictures of extroverts are also highly correlated with colour -- but usually the image includes more than just themselves, and is less joyous than their conscientious counterparts.
Agreeable users, who are high in "social harmony and cooperation", enjoy brightness and tend to have pictures with more than one face in them, with those faces generally smiling and exhibiting "joy and overall positive emotion".
They are also more likely to have "cluttered" display photos.
On the contrary, neurotic users showcase the most negative emotion and least colourful of all the personality types' display photos.
Their photos were also largely of a low aesthetic value compared to the other four personalities.
The study was carried out by researchers from universities across the US.
Newshub.
