Quantitative Personality Predictions From a Brief EEG Recording

The assessment of personality is crucial not only for scientific inquiries but also real-world applications such as personnel selection. In this article, we propose and validate a novel implicit measure to predict an individual's levels in the Big Five traits from 5 minutes electroencephalography (EEG) recordings. Participants viewed Chinese words with positive, negative, neutral emotions. multi-channel event-related potentials elicited by these emotional were used train sparse regression model prediction. Results large test sample 196 participants indicated that scores derived proposed reached significant correlations commonly questionnaire (r = .50, .60, .49, .55, .49 agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness, extraversion, respectively). EEG-based showed good external validity well, capable predicting behavioral indices psychological adjustment similar self-reported scores. Besides, relatively stable across time, reflected test-retest reliability .5 ∼ .7 five within cohort 33 19-78 days later. These evaluations suggest can serve viable alternative conventional questionnaires practice.