Liam Satchell

Evidence of big five and aggressive personalities in gait biomechanics

Behavioral observation techniques which relate action to personality have long been neglected (Furr and Funder in Handbook of research methods in personality psychology, The Guilford Press, New York, 2007) and, when employed, often use human judges to code behavior. In the current study we used an alternative to human coding (biomechanical research techniques) to investigate how personality traits are manifest in gait. We used motion capture technology to record 29 participants walking on a treadmill at their natural speed. We analyzed their thorax and pelvis movements, as well as speed of gait. Participants completed personality questionnaires, including a Big Five measure and a trait aggression questionnaire. We found that gait related to several of our personality measures. The magnitude of upper body movement, lower body movement, and walking speed, were related to Big Five personality traits and aggression. Here, we present evidence that some gait measures can relate to Big Five and aggressive personalities. We know of no other examples of research where gait has been shown to correlate with self-reported measures of personality and suggest that more research should be conducted between largely automatic movement and personality.

Can Judgments of Threat Reflect an Approaching Person’s Trait Aggression?

When in a vulnerable situation (such as walking alone at night), an approaching person may be seen as ‘threatening’. Here, we are interested in how well participants’ judgments of threat reflected the trait aggression of approaching target people. We use two similar experiments to demonstrate and replicate the relationship between judgments of threat and target aggression.In both studies participants judged how threatening they found 22 approaching people (presented in videos). In Study One, participants judged the targets whilst sitting at a computer. In Study Two, participants were standing and were either oriented facing the videos, or oriented away from the videos so they had to look over their shoulder. This was to emulate a potentially threatening person approaching from behind. Across both studies, there was strong evidence that the average judgments of the threat posed by the approaching targets accurately reflected the targets’ trait aggression. It was also found that there was noteworthy variability in individual participants’ ability to detect aggression, with a few participants even having an inverse relationship between threat and the target’s aggression. This research demonstrates that judgments of how ‘threatening’ a person is can be used to accurately index trait aggression at a distance.

Learning to be streetwise:the acquisition of accurate judgments of aggression

The detection of potential danger is an important factor in avoiding harm that is even more important for vulnerable populations such as children. This study explores whether children can recognise the potential for a dangerous encounter from observing the gait of an approaching individual. The participants are divided into three age groups: 13- to 15-year-olds, 16- to 17-year-olds, and over 18s. Participants made judgments of nine, point light presentations of people walking on a treadmill. Ratings of intimidation made by participants were used to assess their ability to detect the walkers’ trait aggression. The ability to detect trait aggression accurately was found to increase with age, as does the consistency in ratings between individuals within the same age group. The importance of experiential learning in the acquisition of aggression detection skills is highlighted.

Staying streetwise: accurate judgments of approaching aggression in older age

The extant literature has generally demonstrated that young adults can detect the trait aggression of another person with limited information. However, there is little research that investigates the life course persistence of aggression detection accuracy. Here, we aimed to explore the accuracy of older adults at detecting potential aggressors. Thirty-nine older adults (M = 71.49, SD = 7.59) and eighty-seven young adults (M = 20.24, SD = 1.74) made intimidation judgments, via video recordings, for nine people (targets). ‘Aggression detection accuracy’ was shown in the relationship between the intimidation judgments made by participants and the targets’ responses to the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire. Both age groups were highly accurate in their recognition of trait aggression and accuracy was maintained into older age, with no difference in accuracy between the older and young adults. There was, however, more variability in the ratings given by the older adults compared to the young adults, suggesting less consensus in judgment for the older compared to the young group. Overall, the participants in this study were highly accurate at detecting trait aggression. There was no difference in average aggression detection between older and young adults but there was in sample agreement. These results are discussed in the context of age effects on intimidation, as well as research in accurate aggression detection.