Automatic recognition of personality and conflict handling style in mobile phone conversations

Abstract

This article proposes experiments on the automatic recognition of personality traits and conflict handling style based on nonverbal communication. The tests are performed over the SSPNet-Nokia Corpus, a collection of 60 mobile phone calls (120 subjects in total) based on the Winter Survival Task. Nonverbal behavioral cues are extracted from speech (captured with the phone microphones) and motor activation (captured indirectly via the gyroscopes mounted on the phones). Support Vector Machines are then adopted to map the cues into two psychological constructs, namely the “Big Five” personality traits and the dimensions of the “Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory”, the former capturing individual characteristics and the latter accounting for subjects attitude towards conflict and disagreement. The results show that performances higher than chance to a statistically significant extent can be achieved for one personality trait (Neuroticism) and two conflict handling styles (Dominating and Obliging).