Using NLP to Infer Personality
PSYC 497 Supervised Research
Through supervised research, I had the opportunity to investigate the use of natural language processing (NLP) to infer personality in the job interview context. Basically, whether we can use computer analysis of what someone says during a job interview to tell what their personality may be like. This topic has significant implications in a world where automated hiring is becoming increasingly popular among organizations, and personality is a common measure of an individual's suitability for a specific job. While the project idea and work was my own, I was able to receive guidance from graduate student Elena Auer in the TNTLab throughout the duration of the project, in which she gave me valuable feedback on ideas, helped me with editing, and showed me how to run my statistical analyses. Working with Elena and the TNTLab provided me with essential resources as I was able to use the data from Elena's thesis for my own research, and also taught me the value of collaboration.
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Poster presented at a poster session organized by the Psychology Integrated Learning Community [click to enlarge].
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Use the following buttons to download final products from my study:
The Value of Scientific Writing
I acknowledge that by pursuing a research-oriented career as a clinical psychologist and professor, I will have to become quite comfortable with writing as writing will be an essential component to my work for the rest of my life. This project gave me the opportunity to practice my writing in a very practical way, as writing the final research paper reflected the actual process of writing a manuscript to submit to a scientific journal for publication. While the goal of a lengthy research paper may seem initially daunting, this project taught me the importance of breaking the workload down into manageable parts. By working with my graduate student mentor to set reasonable deadlines for each piece of the project, I was able to dedicate an appropriate amount of time to each section in order to produce a quality final product. I also learned the importance of organization in research, as when handling over 60 citations it can be easy to lose track of what research article has which information that you want to use in your paper. I was able to address this issue by developing a better filing system for storing the research articles that I was reading through and intending to reference, which I still use with the research I conduct today. If it was not for the practice I got out of this experience, I believe other research projects I have worked on since the completion of this one would not have gone as smoothly.