Predicting programmers' personality via interaction behaviour with keyboard and mouse
This exploratory research was conducted to study the relationship between Big Five personality measurement scale and the interaction behaviour of the programmers with keyboard and mouse to examine the possibility of creating a computer based objective personality measurement scale. A field study with two analyses (N = 20), (N = 12) and a lab study (N = 15) were conducted where N is the number of participants who participated in the research. In the field study, interaction data were collected during normal PC use over several days. In the laboratory study, participants worked on a programming task while their interaction with keyboard and mouse was being recorded in background. All of the participants rated their personality online and uploaded the data for analysis. Results found inconsistent behaviour of all of the personality traits except ‘activity level’ in all studies and thus suggested that a programmer’s ‘activity level’ can be predicted from his/her interaction behaviour with keyboard and mouse. This prediction will help in differentiating good programmers from not so good programmers objectively.