English

Enhancing Personality Recognition by Comparing the Predictive Power of Traits, Facets, and Nuances

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition 2026-02-06 v1 Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning

Abstract

Personality is a complex, hierarchical construct typically assessed through item-level questionnaires aggregated into broad trait scores. Personality recognition models aim to infer personality traits from different sources of behavioral data. However, reliance on broad trait scores as ground truth, combined with limited training data, poses challenges for generalization, as similar trait scores can manifest through diverse, context dependent behaviors. In this work, we explore the predictive impact of the more granular hierarchical levels of the Big-Five Personality Model, facets and nuances, to enhance personality recognition from audiovisual interaction data. Using the UDIVA v0.5 dataset, we trained a transformer-based model including cross-modal (audiovisual) and cross-subject (dyad-aware) attention mechanisms. Results show that nuance-level models consistently outperform facet and trait-level models, reducing mean squared error by up to 74% across interaction scenarios.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.05650,
  title  = {Enhancing Personality Recognition by Comparing the Predictive Power of Traits, Facets, and Nuances},
  author = {Amir Ansari and Jana Subirana and Bruna Silva and Sergio Escalera and David Gallardo-Pujol and Cristina Palmero},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.05650},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Accepted to the 2025 13th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (Late Breaking Results)