Gamified personality assessment: Virtual behavior cues of Honesty-Humility

Unobtrusive behavioral cues of personality traits can be found in physical and virtual environments (e.g., office environments and social media profiles), but detecting and coding such cues are a painstaking effort, and therefore impractical for research purposes. Measuring people’s choices in a virtual, gamified environment may offer a suitable substitute. It is currently unknown whether Honesty-Humility can also be assessed in a virtual environment. In two studies, we demonstrate that Honesty-Humility can be inferred with at least modest validity from virtual behavior cues. In a third study, we tested the fakeability of the virtual cues. This study found that even under faking instructions the virtual cues were related to Honesty-Humility, however, the virtual cues were just as fakeable as self-reported Honesty-Humility. Our results imply that virtual cues can be incorporated in serious games to measure personality. Future research may investigate whether the identified virtual cues are able to predict important Honesty-Humility related outcomes.