A Trait-Activated Multimodal Dataset for Personality and Competency Assessment in Asynchronous Video Interviews
Existing multimodal personality datasets often rely on short, task-free social media videos and crowdsourced apparent-personality labels. AVI-Personality instead collects structured asynchronous video interviews in a simulated job application, with questions designed from Trait Activation Theory and annotations provided by trained psychologists and professional recruiters.
Participants completed a simulated management traineeship application and answered two generic selection questions plus four personality-targeted questions designed to activate Honesty-Humility, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness.
AVI-Personality provides HEXACO-100 self-reports, observer-rated personality from 12 trained psychologists, recruiter-rated job competencies from 5 professionals, interview performance, and ICAR cognitive ability. Observer ratings use Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS).
The release includes interview videos with aligned audio and transcripts, psychometric labels, demographics, and an official subject-level split. The dataset is available to academic researchers after signing the user agreement.
AVI-Personality preserves a standardized recruitment context while providing multimodal behavioral signals and psychologically grounded labels for personality and competency modeling.
| Participants | 646 (309 men / 309 women / 28 non-binary) |
|---|---|
| Videos | 3,876 AVI responses (~85 hours) |
| Age | 36.69 ± 11.92 years |
| Work experience | 15.96 ± 11.36 years |
| Personality labels | HEXACO self-reports + observer ratings |
| Competency labels | 4 competencies + overall interview performance |
| Cognitive ability | ICAR g-score (0–28, mean 14.51) |
| Official split | Subject-level 70 / 10 / 20 (452 / 64 / 130) |
Question order is fixed. Generic questions elicit broad selection-relevant information; personality questions use a past-behavior format to activate specific HEXACO traits.
| # | Interview question | Type | Target trait |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | What would you consider among your greatest strengths and weaknesses as an employee? | Generic | — |
| 2 | How would your best friend describe you? | Generic | — |
| 3 | Think of situations when you made professional decisions that could affect your status or how much money you make. How do you usually behave in such situations? Why do you think that is? | Personality | Honesty-Humility |
| 4 | Think of situations when you joined a new team of people. How do you usually behave when you enter a new team? Why do you think that is? | Personality | Extraversion |
| 5 | Think of situations when someone annoyed you. How do you usually react in such situations? Why do you think that is? | Personality | Agreeableness |
| 6 | Think of situations when your work or workspace were not very organized. How typical is that of you? Why do you think that is? | Personality | Conscientiousness |
Each participant is annotated with six HEXACO domains (self-report and observer-report) and recruiter-rated workplace competencies. Observer personality ratings are provided separately for generic questions and trait-activating questions.
AVI-Personality is released for academic, non-commercial research. Please sign the user agreement and email it to Tianyi Zhang. Access is granted after the signed form is reviewed.
Contact: Tianyi Zhang
Email: t.zhang@seu.edu.cn
Subject: AVI-Personality Dataset Access Request
The dataset may be used only for academic, non-commercial, not-for-profit research. Redistribution is not permitted. Videos and still frames must not be used in any way that could cause the original participants embarrassment or mental anguish. See the User Agreement for the full terms.
If you use the AVI-Personality dataset in your research, please cite our paper. Venue, volume, and DOI will be added after submission.
@article{zhang2026AVI-Personality,
author = {Zhang, Tianyi and Shang, Jinwenxi and Koutsoumpis, Antonis and Shan, Wei and Zong, Yuan and de Vries, Reinout E. and Zheng, Wenming},
title = {AVI-Personality: A Trait-Activated Multimodal Dataset for Personality and Competency Assessment in Asynchronous Video Interviews},
journal = {},
year = {2026},
note = {Manuscript in preparation}
}