A new system has been developed by scientists at the University of South Australia and colleagues that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to reveal a person’s personality type by analysing eye movements.
The system uses Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to demonstrate a link between personality and eye movements. The study and its findings showed that people’s eye movements reveal whether they are sociable, conscientious or curious, with the algorithm software reliably recognising four of the “Big Five” personality traits — neuroticism, extroversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness.
Dr Tobias Loetscher from University of South Australia says that through their study it is possible to develop robots and computers so that they can become more natural, and better at interpreting human social signals.
For the study research scientists tracked the eye movements of 42 participants as they undertook everyday tasks around a university campus. The study provided new links between previously under-investigated eye movements and personality traits, delivering important insights for emerging fields of social signal processing and social robotics.
“There’s certainly the potential for these findings to improve human-machine interactions,” Dr Loetscher said. “Thanks to our machine-learning approach, we not only validate the role of personality in explaining eye movement in everyday life, but also reveal new eye movement characteristics as predictors of personality traits,” said the researchers.
