How Are Personality States Associated with Smartphone Data?

Abstract

Smartphones promise great potential for personality science to study people's everyday life behaviours. Even though personality psychologists have become increasingly interested in the study of personality states, associations between smartphone data and personality states have not yet been investigated. This study provides a first step towards understanding how smartphones may be used for behavioural assessment of personality states. We explored the relationships between Big Five personality states and data from smartphone sensors and usage logs. On the basis of the existing literature, we first compiled a set of behavioural and situational indicators, which are potentially related to personality states. We then applied them on an experience sampling data set containing 5748 personality state responses that are self‐assessments of 30 minutes timeframes and corresponding smartphone data. We used machine learning analyses to investigate the predictability of personality states from the set of indicators. The results showed that only for extraversion, smartphone data (specifically, ambient noise level) were informative beyond what could be predicted based on time and day of the week alone. The results point to continuing challenges in realizing the potential of smartphone data for psychological research. © 2020 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology

Changing personality traits with the help of a digital personality change intervention

“…Future personality change intervention studies should take the effects of demand characteristics systematically into account and should include measures of actual behaviors (e.g., savings or work attendance) to address these biases. Also, future research is needed to investigate whether self-and observer-reported changes are reflected in behavioral indicators captured by smartphone data (55). Second, the entire intervention was delivered via the PEACH smartphone application without any personal contact with participants.…”

Changing Personality Traits with the Help of a Digital Personality Change Intervention

“…Future personality change intervention studies should take the effects of demand characteristics systematically into account and should include measures of actual behaviors (e.g., savings or work attendance) to address these biases. Also, future studies should investigate whether self-and observer-reported changes are reflected in behavioral indicators captured by smartphone data (55). Second, the entire intervention was delivered via the PEACH smartphone application without any personal contact with participants.…”

Computational personality assessment

“…Taken together, past work on the prediction of personality traits from smartphone data suggests that individual levels of personality traits can be predicted from sensing data above chance for most traits (e.g., Stachl, Au, et al, 2020). Some initial studies have also begun to examine the prediction of personality states from sensing data, suggesting pre dictability for Extraversion states only (Rüegger et al, 2020). Cumulatively, personality sensing research provides new insights into people's characteristic behavioral patterns (e.g., stable tendencies, dynamic variability) and new opportunities for automating per sonality assessment (e.g., self-reported or observed behavioral dimensions; Harari et al, 2020).…”