• Advertising Age, Monday, May 4, 2009 9:45 AM

Personality is often a more effective prediction tool for media usage than age, gender and income, according to a study from Mindset Media, a psychographic-research company.

Demographics findings in the study reinforced common notions such as younger people consume more new media. However, Mindset execs say the real discoveries are the findings based on personality. For instance, people who have a lot of "bravado" -- who prefer to leap before they look -- are 50% more likely than the average person to be heavy consumers of all media. The same is true for people who rank low in "compliance" -- those who chafe at rules and may be sarcastic. They are 60% more likely than the average person to be high consumers of all media.

Mindset works with 21 "standard elements" of personality, including leadership, openness, perfectionism and dynamism. It surveyed more than 5,000 people via Nielsen's Online Panel in late 2008 and plotted their media proclivities along with those personality traits.

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