Comparative Analysis of Personality Recognition in Response to Virtual Reality and Two-Dimensional Emotional Stimulus Using ECG Signals

Personality primarily refers to the unique and stable way of a person’s thinking and behavior. A few studies have recently been conducted on personality recognition using physiological signals, most of which have used two-dimensional (2D) emotional stimulus materials. Virtual reality (VR) has been utilized in many fields, and its superiority over 2D in emotion recognition has been proven. However, relevant research on VR scenes is lacking in the field of personality recognition. In this study, based on the psychological principle that emotional arousal can expose an individual’s personality, we attempt to explore the feasibility and effect of using electrocardiogram (ECG) signals in response to VR emotional stimuli for personality identification. For this purpose, a VR-2D emotion-induction experiment was conducted in which ECG signals were collected, and physiological datasets of emotional personalities were constructed through preprocessing and feature extraction. Statistical analysis of the emotion scale scores and ECG features of the participants showed that the VR group had a higher number of significantly correlated features. Meanwhile, VR- and 2D-based personality recognition models were constructed using machine learning algorithms. The results showed that the VR-based personality recognition model achieved better results for the four personality dimensions, with a maximum accuracy of 79.76%. These findings indicate that VR not only enhances the physiological correlation between emotion and personality but also improves the classification accuracy of personality recognition.