As part of the series of the „Finance Research Seminar“, VGSF welcomes Marina Niessner from Kelley School of Business, Indiana University to present her research paper.
Personal Webpage
Paper
AI Personality Extraction from Faces: Labor Market Implications
(joint with Marius Guenzel, Shimon Kogan and Kelly Shue)
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, which typically cover limited samples, the Photo Big Five is readily scalable and can broaden the scope of academic research. However, its use in labor market screening raises important ethical concerns regarding statistical discrimination and individual autonomy.
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