What can our mobile phone tell us about us? It turns out quite a lot. And not only the model itself, but also how often and at what time of the day and week we call and answer calls on it, and also how often and at what speed we move.
“Let me watch you use your cell phone and I’ll tell you who you are” is the short description of a study recently conducted by scientists from the Melbourne Institute of Technology. They studied data from mobile phone accelerometers, tiny sensors that track the movement of a device and are used for pedometers and other applications. It turned out that a rather curious connection can be observed between the indicators of gadgets and the characters of their owners.
Previous studies of this kind were based on the analytics of phone calls and text messaging. According to computer scientist Flora Salim, the new study complemented and confirmed the data of the previous ones. “How far and how fast we walk, or when we answer late-night calls, tend to follow certain patterns, which in turn say a lot about our personality type.”
It has long been proven that physical activity is directly related to character. This time, the researchers analyzed the movement parameters according to different criteria – dispersion (scatter), diversity and regularity. The final data was analyzed to see if the results corresponded to the so-called Big Five personality traits:
- extraversion is determined by how energetic, sociable a person is, whether it is easy to enter into a conversation.
- Openness to experience How curious and inventive we are.
- Goodwill – how friendly, compassionate a person is, whether he is able to come to an agreement with others (the opposite pole is suspicion and hostility towards others).
- Conscientiousness Are we conscious, organized, rational and attentive?
- Neuroticism is determined by how nervous and sensitive a person is (the opposite pole is emotional stability).
What are the main results of the experiment and what can our smartphones say about us?
- Introverted people tend to make repetitive movements on weekday evenings, while extroverted mobile movement patterns are quite unpredictable – probably indicating spontaneous plans and meetings with different people.
- In benevolent people, movement patterns are more random. Most often, such people are busy on weekends and evenings on weekdays.
- Friendly and compassionate women make more outbound calls.
- Conscious and organized people do not tend to contact the same person often in a short period of time.
- Sensitive and neurotic women often check their phones or move them regularly at night, after midnight. Neurotic sensitive men behave differently.
- Curious, resourceful people tend to call less often and receive fewer calls than others.
Research team member Nan Gao is confident that the findings are easy to apply in practice. “For example, in social media to recommend new friends to users, or to select suitable partners in online dating services, or to set up targeted advertising.
However, the most interesting thing is that we can get to know ourselves better. Many of our habits and behaviors are unconscious, but by analyzing them, we can understand ourselves, and therefore resist the pressure of society, which requires us to meet standards, and show more empathy for others.
This helps to live a fuller and richer life, fill it with meaning and gain new experience. Nan Gao recalls that in ancient Greece there was a saying that self-knowledge is the source of wisdom. This means that applications developed on the basis of the results of the study can help users discover their own essence.
The creators of the project “Determination of character traits by the intensity of physical activity” plan to continue collecting information in order to double-check the data obtained and study in more depth the relationship between a person’s character and his way of interacting with a mobile phone.