Measuring Personality and Well-Being Using Smartphone Sensing
This research explores how passively collected smartphone data can be used to capture individual differences in personality and psychological well-being in everyday life.
By combining psychological assessments with behavioral indicators such as screen time, phone unlocks, and physical activity, we investigate whether psychological traits and states leave distinctive digital footprints.
Our work extends smartphone-sensing research beyond traditional personality traits to constructs such as emotional competence, sensory processing sensitivity, well-being, and loneliness. Ultimately, this research aims to better understand both the potential and limitations of smartphone sensing as an unobtrusive complement to traditional psychological assessment.
Collaborators: Rahel Zubler, Torsten Braun, Eric Samikwa, Dimitris Xenakis
Selected relevant publications:
Zubler, R. L., Samikwa, E., Xenakis, D., Braun, T., & Schlegel, K. (2026). Digital footprints of personality: Sensing emotional competences, sensory processing sensitivity, well-being and loneliness via smartphones. Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science.
Xenakis, D., Samikwa, E., Ajayi, J., Di Maio, A., Braun, T., & Schlegel, K. (2023). Towards personality detection and prediction using smartphone sensor data. 2023 21st Mediterranean Communication and Computer Networking Conference (MedComNet), 121–130.