# Machine Learning Approach for Personality Recognition in Spanish Texts
## 2 Personality Survey to Gather Data  
To obtain the ground-truth data, a personality survey was conducted. The objective of the survey was to gather data to relate writing characteristics and behavior with personality. These relationships are useful for constructing a text classification model. The proposed model for personality prediction is intended to be applied in the selection process of candidates for postgraduate programs. Therefore, the study focused on knowing the personality of undergraduate and graduate students. One hundred and twenty students participated in the survey (49 women and 71 men). The participants ranged in age between 20 and 30 years old. The survey consisted of three parts: (i) a general information questionnaire; (ii) the DISC personality test; and (iii) handwritten paragraphs. Each participant was contacted individually and was told about the objectives and the procedure of the survey. If they agreed to participate, the three parts of the survey were explained in detail. Additional help was provided if the participants required it, but most of the participants did not need help or explanations during the survey. The participants took between 20 and 30 min to complete the survey. The entire survey was in Spanish. The first part asked the participants for personal data: age range, gender, schooling, occupation, marital status, preferred social networks, and number of online friends. In the second part, the participants filled in the personality test [5; 6]. To complete the DISC personality test, the participants had to do self-inspection and to conclude to what extent the adjectives in the test represented them, as explained in Section 1.2. In the third part of the survey, the participants handwrote some paragraphs on any topic. Suggested topics were provided. These included goals, hobbies, what they did the day before, and so on. The study showed that Facebook and Twitter are the preferred social networks of the participants, with 105 participants and 15 participants, respectively. The average number of friends of the participants on the social networks was 531 people. Table 2 shows the answers and the results of the personality test for four participants in the survey. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline
**Group 1** & **Group 2** & **Group 3** & **Group 4** \\ \hline Extroverted & Sociable & Analytical & Daring \\ Cautious & Impulsive & Bold & Conscientious \\ Persistent & Determined & Loyal & Talkative \\ Impatient & Calm & Helpful & Moderate \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Examples of the adjective groups in the dominance, influence, steadiness, and compliance (DISC) personality test. The results of the personality survey are shown in Table 3. The most frequent personality dimension was Steadiness (62 people), the second most common dimension was Influence (26 people), the next factor was Compliance (18 people), and the least common factor was Dominance (14 people). It is noteworthy that the DISC personality model was selected since it is a clean model that only requires a short time for training and assessing answers. The results can be obtained relatively easily, and the model can provide adequate information regardless of whether the people conducting the survey are knowledgeable in psychology [22]. Besides personality and demographic data, a set of 120 handwritten texts by participants was obtained. It was observed that most of the participants chose to write about one of the suggested topics. Just a few decided to write on another topic. It was also observed that the participants used words related to their studies and their desire to be successful and achieve their goals. This could be due to the age and level of studies of the participants. Table 4 presents a sample of a paragraph in Spanish text gathered in the study. The translation of the text in English for purposes of clarity. The complete study and analysis were in the Spanish language. Figure 2 shows the original handwritten text.