Finding Characteristics of Users in Sensory Information: From Activities to Personality Traits

Sensors (Basel). 2020 Mar 3;20(5):1383. doi: 10.3390/s20051383.

Abstract

The main objective of this work was to use information provided by a sensor-based activity recognition system to create a profile comprising user habits and link this information to the personality traits of users. User habits are represented by the sequence and duration of often observed daily life activities. Based on this information, we represented the user trials (sequence of activities) following a numerical method using Fourier series. The duration and sequence of the activities changed the phase and amplitude of the harmonics present in the Fourier representation. Each trial represented in this manner is called a behavioral spectrum. These data and the scores obtained from personality questionnaires were clustered separately and then an association was created between the clusters. The objective was to associate the activity-related features (sensor-based) and personality traits. The experimental results showed that for both young and elderly subjects, there is an association between the user personality traits and the manner in which they perform their activities. Moreover, the results obtained in this work show a promising method of assessing the personality traits of users based on their activities.

Keywords: data clustering; personality traits; sensor-based activity recognition; sensor-based habit assessment.

MeSH terms

  • Behavior
  • Databases as Topic
  • Exercise / physiology*
  • Habits
  • Humans
  • Personality*
  • Sensation / physiology*
  • Surveys and Questionnaires