The research group of Zhang Dan from the Department of Psychology at Tsinghua University conducted a study on Big Five personality assessment from a multi-situational perspective in daily life using wearable heart rate measurement devices. Their research paper "Personality in Daily Life: Multi-Situational Physiological Signals Reflect Big-Five Personality Traits" has been officially accepted and published online in IEEE's important medical and bioengineering journal "Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics". The first author of the paper is Shui Xinyu, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology at Tsinghua University, and the corresponding author is Associate Professor Zhang Dan from the Department of Psychology at Tsinghua University. Other authors include graduated students Chen Yiling, Hu Xin, and Associate Professor Wang Fei.
**Research Overview Figure**
This study aimed to explore methods for assessing individuals' Big Five personality traits using wearable physiological signals in daily life. The research recruited a group of university students with strict schedules and collected wrist-worn heart rate data in daily situations over a two-week period. By dividing their heart rate activities into five situations according to their daily schedules—morning exercises, morning classes, afternoon classes, free activities, and evening self-study—and extracting heart rate activity features, the regression prediction model established in the study could effectively predict individual scores on the personality dimensions of openness and extraversion. At the same time, as the recording duration increased, the performance of individual prediction models for conscientiousness and neuroticism dimensions also showed a significant upward trend, with effective prediction likely achievable with further increases in recording duration.
Multi-situational heart rate model prediction results, from left to right: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism
The popularity of wearable physiological recording devices brings new possibilities for assessing personality traits in daily life. Compared to traditional questionnaires or laboratory assessments, measurements based on wearable devices can collect rich individual physiological data without interfering with normal life, breaking through the situational limitations of the laboratory, and thus more comprehensively describing individual differences. This study found that heart rate responses in daily situations have situational dependency, proposed a model framework for recording multi-situational physiological responses, and preliminarily demonstrated its feasibility through daily physiological experiments, providing new ideas for automated personality assessment applications.
This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61977041) and the Tsinghua University Spring Breeze Fund (2021Z99CFY037).
Paper Information:
X. Shui, Y. Chen, X. Hu, F. Wang and D. Zhang, "Personality in Daily Life: Multi-Situational Physiological Signals Reflect Big-Five Personality Traits," in IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, DOI: 10.1109/JBHI.2023.3253820.
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10064124
