Science Judges Your Personality Using Fallout 3

[Fanghawk]

Science Judges Your Personality Using Fallout 3

Scientists believe that Fallout 3 might measure your personality as effectively as a long, boring quiz.

Back in 2011, PhD student Giel van Lankveld noticed something interesting about Neverwinter Nights. If you compared the in-game experiences of characters with the personality test results of players, <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/features/9199-What-Your-Archmage-Build-Says-About-You>certain in-game actions lined up with prominent personality traits. These results were consistent among gamers and non-gamers alike, suggesting that video games could be just as effective at evaluating personality traits as any other formal quiz. Of course a single study couldn't actually prove anything, so van Lankveld set about confirming his findings with more science and a new videogame. Now van Lankveld's latest study is suggesting that the introduction to Fallout 3 could reveal a great deal about a player's personality.

As with the Neverwinter Nights study, participants who had never before played Fallout 3 were given a period of time to complete the chosen scenario. After the time was up, players completed the NEO-FFI personality test, which ranks individuals in terms of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. "From our results," the study reads, "we may conclude that personality effects on game behavior exist for all five traits of the Five Factor Model."

While correlations between player personality and character behavior weren't as prominent as those in the Neverwinter Nights study, the authors still found the results to be statistically significant. For example, players with high openness rankings generally explored their environments at a fast rate while conscientious players avoided confrontational dialogue options. Players with high rankings in neuroticism, meanwhile, tended to avoid conversations altogether and usually took much longer to complete the scenario.

The study's authors acknowledge that some problems could skew the results, such as fewer measurable variables in Fallout 3's introduction compared to the previous experiment. Despite these limitations, the results still suggest that even in a digital fantasy your characters might have a lot to say about the kind of person you are. It's certainly enough to encourage van Lankveld to continue his research. His next study will be a large-scale experiment that observes the behaviors of players across several different games.

Thanks to <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/articles/Michael%20Cook>Michael Cook for the info.

Source: <a href=http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/AIIDE/AIIDE12/paper/view/5462/5717>AAAI

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[Xan Krieger]

Question: What happens if I'm in the mood to just murder people? The results vary depending on my mood and current state of intoxication.

edit: Nice avatar, looks like one of the early robots that fought alongside my brother unit Xan Kriegor.

 

[twaddle]

This actually sounds like sound logic. In my main mmo dragon nest My main is a Engineer. This is the summoner class that allows you to summon robots and towers to fight for you. I guess that means I like it when people to do things for me instead of doing it myself but like managing them and being able to step in when necessary and get the job done. Also my other class is a priest and although its main idea is to buff and heal i mostly spawn attack structure and just like stunning and stacking damage. That can be construed as I'm nice and willing to help, but I like to take the task in my own hands and whittle it down little by little.

 

[War Penguin]

I need to get back to this game sometime.
I'd be a ghool not to.

Wow dude. That... that... uh... Let's just say that maybe you need to take a break from the puns... <_<

OT: Considering how I've pretty much remember almost the entirety of Fallout 3 and its wasteland, I wonder how this study will show my personality. I'll be the nicest bastard who'll go head first into danger and do the most dastardly things to get the nicest weapons. Terrible Shotgun you say? Bye bye, Smiling Jack!

*BLAM*

 

[NightHawk21]

Hopefully not or I'm a super OCD-type character who has to check every crate and pick up every useless item even if its only worth the smallest denomination of currency. Also I would apparently have a tendency to steal everything in sight.

 

[iblis666]

id hate to see what they say about me since i pick up everything to sell even if it yields me 1 cap, i dont steal anything, and im nice to everyone including slavers but if im attacked i show no mercy

 

[Pebkio]

No, I think not mister scientist guy. What Yahtzee once said is true, who you are in a video game is very different than who you are in real life. There's just one thing that ruins your experiments, and that's the save button. Hmm... I have the choice to save a town or nuke it into oblivion. In real life I wouldn't mess with the thing, but I want to see the nuke go off, so I'll save and then go press the boom button. Boom! Reload...

Also, there are clearly better paths than others. For instance, there's this android person living in rivet city. In real life, I'd find out who he is, tell him, dissuade him from killing his previous owner and convince the guy that his android was destroyed (thanks to the Railroad peoples). However, whenever I play, I tell the Android who he is, offer to kill the previous owner so I can get the really good gun... then I tell the guy who the android is for HIS reward of better vats percentages. If I'm playing a good guy, I then kill the previous owner and if I'm playing a bad guy I don't do anything else.

...actually, in real life, I'd die trying to get to the old programmer...
...no wait, I'd die long before I get to Rivet City...
...I'm not entirely sure I'd make it out of the Vault without being shot to death...

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

While I do groan inwardly when I see some-one do something stupid in real life I do NOT proceed to kill the entire town as retribution.

A better study would be over multiple games of a similar genre with more rigid controls ie no saving, achievements, looking up answers on the internet etc.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

You mean that in a situation where I am given more or less free reign and choice to do certain things, or not do certain things (in this case in a videogame) my choices tend to correlate directly with my individual personality?!

My choices tend to correlate directly with my personality...

This just in! Obvious results are obvious!

Seriously, how does one get the funding to do these experiments? I want in on it.

Also, aside from the inherent derpyness of their hypothesis (and the obvious flaw when they invariably encounter someone that consciously plays COUNTER to their type for trophies or lolz) who are these people they are testing?

"Just some random people that agreed to do a psychological experiment we took off the street, we had them play FO3 and fill out a test."

No. Regular people would tell you to fuck off, and anyone that volunteers for psychological experimentation is inherently a sampling error.

 

[MrGalactus]

I need to get back to this game sometime.
I'd be a ghool not to.

Swing-and-a-miss

OT: It makes sense that it could measure your personality, but what if you're just RP-ing? A character you've given a made-up identity to must be impossible to measure, given that staying in character 100% of the time is pretty much impossible.

 

[Omegatronacles]

So where do I sign up to play video games for science?

 

[Keyes]

I like this. It's not about the obvious connection, it's about having a different way of giving a personality test. Besides that, it seems like you could get more interesting and varied results compared to a 200 question test which only has something like 4 or 5 answers to each question to select from. And besides all that, compared to that test with so many questions, it sure sounds like more fun.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Question: What happens if I'm in the mood to just murder people?

derpsnip

The same could be said of any test then: "I'll just answer randomly. Your test sucks. Can't evaluate a dissentious individual such as I, huh? I'm so fucking cool and rebellious! Fuck science!"

The point is that it requires your participation. It's not "Play this game for fun and I'll tell you who you are", it's "Here's a virtual scenario and what would you do?".

The problem you have with using a role-playing game to measure personality is that people will be, er, role-playing. They're not reacting to a situation how they would, they're reacting how their character would. A kind and considerate person role-playing a trigger-happy merc will come across as a bit of a heartless bastard because they're playing the part of one - kinda the whole point of a role-playing game.

I suppose the test could achieve some half-way meaningful results if the players were all expressly told to just be themselves, but that defeats the point of an RPG, surely? In the same way that an actor is acting when they're playing a part but not acting when they're just being themselves, a player is only role-playing when they're, well, playing a role. Giving someone an RPG and telling them expressly not to RP seems a bit daft.

 

[Zeckt]

I wonder what he would say about me who completed every side quest and explored every single area in the game and turned on NCR, the legion and new vegas by leaving it defenseless. He probably would not say anything and just send me to an asylum.

 

[crimson sickle2]

I think the test functions around play style and minute choices rather than goal completion, but what does stealing and destroying every item, character, and movable object from start to finish evaluate to?

 

[Baldry]

Well considering I was a horder in this and a horder in real life there's some evidence it's correct.

 

[Andrew_C]

Rather small sample size, only 35 individuals. While interesting, I don't think the results are in any way significant. Also, they only evaluated their responses to the tutorial section, up to completion of the GOAT.

 

[Legion]

Got to love all the people who gave all the predictable "Well it's wrong because I do X, when in real life I'd do Y", when the study wasn't talking about specific actions such as moral choices. Rather how you play the game.

There are some people who explore every single room in a place and loot every chest. There are some who don't bother exploring and instead only stick to the main tasks. There are some who skip dialogue and others who go out of their way to read it all.

Those are the kind of things they are looking at. Not "Blowing up Megaton makes you a psychopath".