A Survey Study on Personality Traits and Motivational Affordances

!"#$%&'()*+,*'#-"*"./0'1)2)3'*)%&4/5/67#8"+/6*7.+/%&/ !"#$%&'()*+/9#')*$/'&./:%*)8'*)%&'(/522%#.'&3"$/ Yuan Jia1, Bin Xu2, Yamini Karanam1, Stephen Voida3 1School of Informatics and Computing 2Information Science 3Dept. of Information Science Indiana University–Indianapolis (IUPUI) Cornell University University of Colorado Boulder Indianapolis, IN 46202 USA Ithaca, NY 14853 USA Boulder, CO 80309 USA {jiayuan,ykaranam}@iupui.edu [email protected] [email protected] 5;69<5=9/ education, commerce, health, intra-organizational systems, While motivational affordances are widely used to enhance innovation, data gathering, and sustainable consumption [3, user engagement in “gamified” apps, they are often 5, 22, 47]. employed en masse. Prior research offers little guidance about how individuals with different dispositions may Gamification employs the use of interface affordances to react—positively and negatively—to specific affordances. In motivate users to engage in the systems with “gameful” this paper, we present a survey study investigating the experiences [9, 11]. These specific affordances are often relationships among individuals’ personality traits and referred to as motivational affordances. The most common perceived preferences for various motivational affordances motivational affordances used in gamification are Points, used in gamification. Our results show that extraverts tend to Badges, and Leaderboards [1, 5, 38]. Other affordances be motivated by Points, Levels, and Leaderboards; people found in academic studies and commercial applications with high levels of imagination/openness are less likely to be include Levels, Challenges, Rewards, Feedback, Clear motivated by Avatars. Negative correlations were found Goals, Avatar/Theme, and Progress [49, 51]. between emotional stability (the inverse of neuroticism) and While gamification has been shown to provide a number of several motivational affordances, indicating a possible generally positive outcomes, studies have also pointed out limitation of gamification as an approach for a large segment negative consequences, such as increased effects of of the population. Our findings contribute to the HCI competition. Some researchers have found that different community, and in particular to designers of persuasive and individuals are impacted by gamification differently, gamified apps, by providing design suggestions for targeting suggesting the effects of personality differences in specific audiences based on personality. responding to gamification [21, 22]. In a study applying gamification to an educational context, Codish & Ravid 57*>%#/?"+@%#.$/ Gamification; motivational affordances; personality; user found significant differences between extraverts and interface design. introverts in how students perceive different motivational affordances in their courses; for example, extraverts reported 5=:/=('$$)2)3'*)%&/?"+@%#.$/ a lack of playfulness in Leaderboards [5]. H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous. While some users find some affordances to be motivating, others may find that they detract from the experience— AB9<CDE=9ACB/ possibly even leading to technology abandonment. Based on Designers of information systems have increasingly used the prior research, personality seems to serve as a key game design elements as one way to engage users and differentiator; however, little is known about how people enhance user experiences [5, 11, 26, 51]. Researchers have with different personality traits relate to or prefer various defined the approach of using game design elements into a specific motivational affordances. Therefore, in order to non-game context as gamification [10]. Recently, there are foster the design of applications that most effectively an increasing number of practitioners and researchers motivate and appeal to individual users, we need to better working to apply gamification in various domains such as understand the relationship between personality traits and Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for motivational affordances in gamified applications. personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies Many theories of personality exist, and they each focus on bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrightsfor different personality traits. In this study, we utilized a components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. derivative of the “Big-Five” model (extraversion, Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission agreeableness, consciousness, neuroticism, and and/or a fee. Request permissions [email protected]. imagination/openness), which has been widely accepted and CHI'16, May 07-12, 2016, San Jose, CA, USA adopted in the research community [35]. © 2016 ACM. ISBN 978-1-4503-3362-7/16/05$15.00 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858515 Our initial interest in exploring this question was motivated by an interest in applying gamification to applications that Motivational Affordances Motivational Sources Design Principles Points, Badges, Levels, Clear goals, Cognitive: Systems provide various challenge levels Feedback, Progress, Challenge, Rewards Competence and achievement or immediate performance feedback Social & Psychological: Systems facilitate one’s desire to influence Leaderboard Leadership and followership others, or influenced by others Emotional: Systems induce intended emotions via Affect and emotion; interaction with the system, or promote Story/Theme Psychological: creation and representation of self- Autonomy and the Self identity. Extrinsic motivators Systems provide incentives for certain Rewards actions. Table 1. Affordance types and their corresponding motivational source and design principles [22, 50] promote health-related habit tracking. While many motivational needs” [50]. He also commented that applications targeted at promoting a healthy lifestyle utilize applications that promote motivation would attract usage and gamification, they have not yet been proven effective for increase the sense that people “cannot live without it” [50]. long-term engagement [31]. Most of these applications use By examining 24 empirical studies in literature, Hamari and various combinations of motivational affordances and are colleagues categorized 10 types of motivational affordances not designed for a specific user population. used in gamification: Points, Leaderboards, In this study, we explore the relations between personality Achievements/Badges, Levels, Story/Theme, Clear Goals, traits and people’s perception of individual motivational Feedback, Rewards, Progress and Challenge [22]. Among affordances in a sample gamified personal informatics the research they reviewed, Hamari et al. found that Points, application. Our two main research questions are: Leaderboards, and Badges were the most commonly used game-like motivational affordances [22]. To summarize the RQ1: In what ways do users consider particular characterizations of motivational affordances provided by motivational affordances to be helpful or Zhang [50] and the 24 other studies selected by Hamari et al. unhelpful in the context of habit tracking? [22], we compiled a taxonomy of motivational affordance RQ2: What relations exist (if any) between users’ types and their corresponding needs and design principles; personality traits and their preferences for this taxonomy appears in Table 1. different types of motivational affordances? !"#$%&'()*+/9#')*$/ With the findings of this study, we aim to provide a better Early research by Lucas indicated that personal factors affect understanding of how different people respond to various the adoption of information systems [33]. He argued that it gamification approaches, as well to gain a better was simply because some people feel computers to be understanding about how persuasive and gamified apps incomprehensible. However, the effect of personal factors on might be customized based on users’ personality traits. the success of information systems was largely ignored until the 1990s [36]. Nearly 20 years after Lucas’ work, interest <FG59FD/HC<?/ towards dispositional factors, such as personality, had re- :%*)8'*)%&'(/522%#.'&3"$/ entered the picture [36]. According to Maddi [34], Motivation of human behavior is an important but often personality is defined as “a stable set of characteristics and under-utilized theoretical perspective [50]. Studies on tendencies that determine peoples’ commonalities and motivation have mainly examined two questions: (1) what differences in thoughts, feelings, and actions.” To causes behavior and (2) why intensity of behavior varies comprehensively understand users’ personalities, we base [44]. These questions help us understand how motivation our research design on the widely-used “Big-Five” gives behavior direction—the purpose of behavior, for personality factors [8, 17, 35]. example, why people start, continue, or terminate an activity—and energy—the strength of behavior, for example, The Big-Five factors, a descriptive model of personality, has how much or how often people conduct an activity. been used extensively in previous psychology and HCI research. The Big-Five factors are: Conscientiousness, The term affordance is defined as the set of “actionable Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Extraversion, and properties

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