DISAGREEABLE and closed to new ideas 鈥� that鈥檚 the picture that emerges of contributors from a survey of their psychological attributes.
at the Sammy Ofer School of Communication in Herzliya, Israel, and his team gave a personality test to 69 Wikipedia contributors. As he expected, the 鈥淲ikipedians鈥� were more comfortable online than in the 鈥渞eal world鈥�. But he was surprised that contributors scored low for agreeableness and openness to new ideas, given that contributing to the website is based on sharing knowledge (CyberPsychology & Behavior, vol 6, p 679).
Amichai-Hamburger speculates that Wikipedians make their contributions online because they struggle to express themselves in social situations.
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