Abstract
In this work we explore the effect of personality traits on user interaction in virtual reality (VR), on the less widely studied aspect of task performance during object manipulation. We conducted an experiment measuring the performance of 39 users interacting with a virtual environment using the virtual hand metaphor to execute a simple selection and positioning task, with or without virtual obstacles. Our findings suggest concrete correlations between user personality traits and behavior data. Perspective-taking, in particular, seems to be strongly affecting task performance, highlighting the need for further research. Besides the wider implications of our results in relation to the effect of personality on how users experience VR, our main contribution lies in identifying specific traits that should be taken into account when designing experiments involving users performing such tasks. The study of these traits may also significantly advance our understanding of personality traits as part of the user model in a wider range of VR applications, including those offering personalization and recommendation functionality.
Highlights
Personality, as the sum of individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving of a person, has been studied extensively even since the Victorian era
A concern was to avoid overloading the users with long questionnaires, so for the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) we kept only the statements pertaining to the Perspective-taking and Fantasy Scale personality traits that we examined in this work
Rejected—The analysis revealed that PT is negatively correlated with higher hand movement—Table 2 Rejected—The analysis revealed that PT is negatively correlated with the task completion time—Table 3 Rejected Rejected—The analysis revealed that Fantasy Scale (FS) is negatively correlated with the total (Pearson = −0.350, p = 0.029) and selection task completion time (r = −0.350, p = 0.029) for the None obstacle condition height related data
Summary
Personality, as the sum of individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving of a person, has been studied extensively even since the Victorian era. These traits are commonly measured by administering self-reporting personality tests, widely used by psychologists. They reflect people’s characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (Cummings and Sanders, 2019) and are considered important as they describe stable patterns of behavior that persist for long periods of time (Caspi et al, 2005), which can affect different aspects of life (Roberts et al, 2007). Personality-targeted design has been studied in human computer interaction (HCI) as an important factor for user modeling in a wide range of applications (Ucho et al, 2016; Eskes et al, 2016; Gunter, 2016; Jia et al, 2016; Favaretto et al, 2017; González, 2017). The importance of personality traits as factors significantly affecting the user experience in a virtual environment (VE) has been recognized in previous research, leading to several studies attempting to explore these effects.
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