Being addicted to your phone is no new feat for most people. And although there isn't much that can be determined, researchers say that it is possible to figure out a person's personality traits from their phone movement patterns. The researchers used phone accelerometers which are tiny sensors that track phone movements, to help predict people's personalities.
“Activity like how quickly or how far we walk, or when we pick up our phones during the night, often follows patterns and these patterns say a lot about our personality type,” said Flora Salim, Associate Professor at RMIT University in Australia. Although previously phone calls and message activity was used to determine personality types, phone accelerometers seem a lot more efficient at collecting this data.
The researchers further stated that since physical activity is more associated with personality, they tried to find co-relations between physical activity features and the data collected from the phones. They then analysed the results in accordance with the five personality traits. Those were extraversion - how social, energetic and talkative a person is, agreeableness - how compassionate and friendly one is, neuroticism - how sensitive and nervous one is, openness - how curious and inventive one is and conscientiousness - how efficient, careful and organised one is.
Their research found that people who were more consistent with their phone movements during the weekday evenings were more introverted than people with random phone movements. People who were friendly made more outgoing calls whereas agreeable people were busier on the weekends than the weekdays. Conscientious people didn't contact the same person often in short durations of time while neurotic women checked their phones until late in the night. Inventive and curious people made and received fewer calls compared to others.
Well, we wonder what else can be determined with these phone patterns. Stay tuned for more updates.
