Study lead author and RMIT University PhD student, Nan Gao, said the potential applications from this research were exciting.
“There are applications for this technology in social media with friend recommendations, online dating matches and targeted advertising, but I think the most exciting part is what we can learn about ourselves,” said Gao.
“Many of our habits and behaviours are unconscious but, when analysed, they tell us a lot about who we really are so we can understand ourselves better, resist social pressure to conform and to empathize with others."
"Most importantly, being who we truly are can make our experience of life richer, more exciting and more meaningful.”
“In Ancient Greece there is a saying about knowing yourself as the beginning of wisdom, applications like this can really help to reveal who we are to ourselves.”
The results were analysed in accordance with the Big Five personality traits, which are:
- Extraversion: how energetic, sociable and talkative you are.
- Openness: how curious and inventive you are.
- Agreeableness: how friendly and compassionate, rather than suspicious and hostile, you are to others.
- Conscientiousness: how organized, efficient and careful you are.
- Neuroticism: how nervous and sensitive, rather than confident and secure, you are.
The team’s study ‘Predicting Personality Traits from Physical Activity Intensity’ has just been published in the IEEE Computer journal.
This work was funded through an Australian Research Council Linkage project between Swinburne University of Technology, RMIT University and Aurecon.
The study was conducted on a public dataset gathered from participants at a US university. As findings may vary in a different group, the team will next collect data from Australian participants to further test the effectiveness of their research.
Story: Michael Quin