Artificial intelligence can predict your personality… simply by tracking your eyes

It’s often been said that the eyes are the window to the soul. Now, new research reveals that eyes may also be an indicator of personality type, simply by the way they move.

Developed by the University of South Australia in partnership with the University of Stuttgart, Flinders University and the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany, the research used state-of-the-art machine-learning algorithms which showed show people’s eye movements revealed whether they were sociable, conscientious or curious, with the Artificial Intelligence (AI) reliably recognising four of the big five personality traits: neuroticism, extroversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness (the fifth is openness to experience).

Researchers from the University of South Australia (UniSA), the University of Stuttgart, Flinders University and the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany tracked the eye movements of 42 participants as they undertook everyday tasks around a university campus, and assessed their personality traits using well-established questionnaires.

UniSA’s Dr Tobias Loetscher says the study is important for social signal processing and social robotics. “Today’s robots and computers are not socially aware, so they cannot adapt to non-verbal cues. This research provides opportunities to develop robots and computers so that they can become more natural, and better at interpreting human social signals. And thanks to our machine-learning approach, we have not only validated the role of personality in explaining eye movement in everyday life, but also revealed eye movement characteristics as predictors of personality traits.”