Dr. David Stillwell

Research Associate & Research Manager
The Psychometrics Centre, University of Cambridge

E-Mail:
Twitter: @david_stillwell
Linkedin: View Profile

Biography

While researching for my PhD in cognitive decision-making, I created a Facebook application called myPersonality that provides real psychological questionnaires and gives users feedback on their results. More than 6 million individuals have taken a questionnaire. As a Research Associate at the Psychometrics Centre I currently collaborate with researchers in different disciplines to mine the myPersonality database for interesting research findings. In future I would like to combine cognitive research with online research methods in order to measure individual differences in cognition on a large scale.

I am open to working with commercial companies, both to put research findings into practice and to take advantage of the different resources that companies can bring to bear on research problems. I collaborate with the machine learning group at Microsoft Research, and I also created a digital exhibit called Mirror with creative agency RKCR/Y&R for the National Media Museum. I am a founder of a startup which improves marketing by adding an understanding of the personality of customers, and I have spoken at several business conferences on this topic.

Academic
2012 - Present	Research Associate The Psychometrics Centre, Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge
2008 - 2011	Ph.D. in the area of decision-making Funded by a European Social Research Council (ESRC) Studentship School of Psychology, University of Nottingham with Dr Richard Tunney
2007 - 2008	M.Sc. (with merit) Psychological Research Methods Funded by a European Social Research Council (ESRC) Studentship School of Psychology, University of Nottingham
2004 - 2007	B.Sc. Hons (first class) Psychology School of Psychology, University of Nottingham
1997 - 2004	A-Level and GCSE student Colchester Royal Grammar School
Commercial
2007 - Present	Founder and Developer of web application myPersonality Installed by millions of users worldwide. I also co-founded Cambridge Personality Research, Preference (which used to be LikeAudience) and YouAreWhatYouLike, which make use of the data that myPersonality has collected for market research.
2004 - Present	Freelance Web Designer Sites such as Q-Active, Midlands Nordic Walking, Linda's Nailz and Beauty, and Handmade By Hannah.
Feb - Apr 2011	Consultant for Microsoft Research in Cambridge Creating an app to explore online data collection for behavioral game theory, supervised by Thore Graepel in the machine learning group.
2007	Consultant to Taptu Ltd Set up and optimised their Facebook application promoting their mobile search

Peer Reviewed Journal/Conference Publications

Schwartz, A.H., Eichstaedt, J., Dziurzynski, L., Kern, M., Blanco, E., Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D., Seligman, M., Ungar, L.H. (2013). Toward Personality Insights from Language Exploration in Social Media. In AAAI-2013 Spring Symposium: Analyzing Microtext. Stanford, California. [Summary Paper | Poster]

Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D.J & Graepel, T. (2013) Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior. Proc. of the National Academy of Sciences. [Link]

Hogarth, L., Stillwell, D.J., & Tunney, R.J. (2013) Impulsivity and acute nicotine exposure are associated with discounting global consequences in the Harvard game. Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental.

Rentfrow, J., Goldberg, L.R., Stillwell, D.J., Kosinski, M., Gosling S.D., & Levitin, D.J. (2012) The Song Remains the Same: A Replication and Extension of the MUSIC Model. Music Perception. [Link]

Stillwell, D.J. & Tunney, R.J. (2012) Individuals' insight into intrapersonal externalities Judgment and Decision Making, 7, 390-401. [Link | Data]

Bachrach, Y., Kosinski, M., Graepel, T., Kohli, P., & Stillwell, D. (2012) Personality and Patterns of Facebook Usage. ACM WebSci 2012. Accepted as oral presentation. One of four finalists for best paper award. [Link]

Kosinski, M., Kohli, P., Stillwell, D., Bachrach, Y., & Graepel, T. (2012) Personality and Website Choice. ACM WebSci 2012. Accepted as poster presentation. [Link]

Kohli, P., Bachrach, Y., Stillwell, D., Kearns, M., Herbrich, R., & Graepel, T. (2012) Colonel Blotto On Facebook: The Effect of Social Relations On Strategic Interaction. ACM WebSci 2012. Accepted as poster presentation. One of three finalists for best poster award. [Link]

Quercia, D., Las Casas, D., Pesce, J.P., Stillwell, D., Kosinski, M., Almeida, V. & Crowcroft, J. (2012) Facebook and Privacy: The Balancing Act of Personality, Gender, and Relationship Currency. ICWSM. [Link]

Wang, N., Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D.J. & Rust, J. (2012) Can well-being be measured using Facebook status updates? Validation of Facebook’s Gross National Happiness Index. Social Indicators Research. [Link]

Stillwell, D.J. & Tunney, R.J. (2012) Effects of measurement methods on the relationship between smoking and delay reward discounting. Addiction. [Link | Supplementary Material]

Quercia, D., Lambiotte, R., Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D. & Crowcroft, J. (2011) The Personality of Popular Facebook Users. ACM CSCW 2012. [Link]

Quercia, D., Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D. & Crowcroft, J. (2011) Our Twitter profiles, our selves: Predicting personality with Twitter. IEEE SocialCom. [Link]

Hagger-Johnson, G., Egan, V. & Stillwell, D.J. (2011) Are social networking profiles reliable indicators of sensational interests? Journal of Research in Personality, [Link]

Stillwell, D.J. & Tunney, R.J. (2009). Melioration behaviour in the Harvard Game is reduced by simplifying decision outcomes. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62, 2252-2261. [link]
NB: I have made the simplified Harvard Game program available for download.

Talks

Stillwell, D.J. (2012) The future of myPersonality and research using Online Social Networks. Psychometrics Centre seminar series, University of Cambridge (October).

Stillwell, D.J. (2012) myPersonality: What can we find out with 6 million users' personality scores and access to their Facebook profiles. Horizon, Nottingham University (October)

Stillwell, D.J. (2012) You are predictable: Inferring psychology from 6 million Facebook profiles. Ubisoft invited talk (Paris, September).

Kern, M.L., Schwartz, H.A., Eichstaedt, J.C., Dziurzynski, L., Ramones, S.M., Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D.J., Ungar, L.H. (2012) Personality and Word Use: Positive and Negative Expressions of the Self Through Social Media. European Positive Psychology Conference (Moscow, June).

Stillwell, D.J. (2012) Psychological correlates of smoking, drinking and drug-taking (use and dependency) from a large online sample. Social and Developmental Psychology department, University of Cambridge.

Crosier, B., Webster, G., Stillwell, D., Kosinski, M., Orozco, S.T., Novell, C. (2012) Personality Shapes Real-World and Online Social Networks. Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) in San Diego, CA

Kohli, P., Bachrach, Y., Graepel, T., Smyth, G., Armstrong, M., Stillwell, D., Herbrich, R., Kearns, M. (2012) Behavioral Game Theory on Online Social Networks: Colonel Blotto is on Facebook Workshop on Computational Social Science and the Wisdom of Crowds (NIPS 2011). [Link]

Stillwell, D.J. (2011) The Relationship of Intrapersonal Externalities and Delay Discounting to Smoking. School of Psychology Internal Seminar, Nottingham University.

Sun, L., Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D., Rust, J. (2011) On the Test-Retest Reliability of the 100-item IPIP Scales: Differential Temporal Stability of the Big Five Personality Traits. International Meeting of the Psychometric Society (IMPS), Hong Kong.

Stillwell, D.J. (2011) Personality data collection on social networks. Psychademia Conference, Nottingham Trent University.

Stillwell, D.J. & Tunney, R.J. (2011) Delay discounting methodology does not affect the relationship between discounting and impulsive behaviours. Experimental Psychology Society (EPS) Conference, Nottingham University.

Stillwell, D.J. (2010) myPersonality: how to utilize social networks for social research. Psychometrics Centre, University of Cambridge.

Posters/Demos

Stillwell, D.J. & Kosinski, M. (2012) myPersonality project: Use of online social networks for large-scale social research. 1st ACM Workshop on Mobile Systems for Computational Social Science. MobiSys 2012, UK [View Summary Paper| View Poster]

Rife, S.C., Mickelson K.D., Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D.J. (2012) Facebook Networks and Population Parameters. International Association for Relationship Research, Chicago. [View Poster]

Sun, L., Cek, I., Spindler, S. A. K., Stillwell, D., Kosinski, M. & Rust, J. (2011) Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the 100-item IPIP measure on a large Facebook dataset. International Meeting of the Psychometric Society (IMPS), Hong Kong.

Stillwell, D.J., Kosinski, M., & Tunney, R.J. (2011) You are what you like. Research Showcase finalist, Nottingham University. [View Poster]

Stillwell, D.J., Bibby, P., & Tunney, R.J. (2010) Are people happiest living near others like them? Research Showcase finalist, Nottingham University. [View Poster]

Professional Qualifications

Level A and B certificates of competence in occupational testing (ability tests, and personality tests using the NEO-PI-R). Issued by the British Psychological Society.

Teaching Experience

Led 3-day workshop on Computer-adaptive testing and Item Response Theory in Istanbul for Bahcesehir University (2013)

Taught 'Intelligence and Patience' lecture to undergraduates in Cognitive and Biological Psychology course (2013)

Taught 'Online Data Collection' lecture to postgraduates in Research Methods course (2012)

Taught on Psychometrics course to postgraduates (2012)

Supervised a visiting Masters student, Koen De Couck (2012)

Taught on Level A/B psychometric test construction course (2012)

Led a training course for business on using stats in advertising (2012).

Led tutorials for subsidiary students taking introductory psychology classes, demonstrator in lab classes for second year psychologists for 3 years, co-supervised a third year undergraduate on her final project (2007-2011).

Awards

Allen Standen Prize for Outstanding Project 2006 - 2007
School of Psychology, University of Nottingham

Major Training Courses

11-14 Jan 2010	Enterprisers Programme Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning, hosted at Warwick University Learned to: spot enterprising opportunities, develop self efficacy, and apply more entrepreneurial ways of thinking to any project through a process of knowledge, activity and reflection.
6-10 Sep 2009	Psychometric Test Construction The Psychometrics Centre, University of Cambridge Introduction to Item Response Theory and Classical Test Theory

Media/Business/Political Events

I spoke at Chinwag Psych conference (2013).

I was quoted in the Observer article called Social Media: the next generation of upstart apps gunning for Facebook (2013).

I spoke on the future of the Internet at the European Parliament for the European Internet Foundation (2013).

I was quoted in the Daily Mail article about mis-selling by Energy Companies (2013).

I was a panelist on the Guardian Careers Matching your career aspirations to the jobs market: live chat (2013).

An article I co-authored, 'Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior', published in PNAS, got a lot of press coverage, on the BBC and in all major newspapers. I also interviewed about the results on CNN (2013).

Mirror, a digital exhibit I created for the National Media Museum in collaboration with creative agency Saint Y&R, was mentioned on various news sources including Design Week, ZDNet, Page Magazine, and The Guardian (2012).

I spoke at the Psychology of Online Influence conference (2012). Slides and an audio recording are available here.

I spoke at Insight 2.0: The Future of Social Media Analysis on the topic of behavioural profiling based on Facebook Likes (2012).

I spoke at Social Media Week London at a panel on The Psychology of Online Influence. A video of the session is available here. And here is a podcast after the event (2012).

I wrote a blog post for New Media and Marketing called, Neuromarketing? Just ask me what you want to know (2012).

I was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 about myPersonality for the 'You and Yours' programme. A recording is available here (2011).

LikeAudience, a project I co-founded, was mentioned on various news sources including Times Higher Education (2011).

Last updated April 2013