Assessing Openness Using an Online Escape Room: A Comparative Analysis of Behavioural and Self-Reported Data

The possibility of having played in an escape room is high. If not, it is one of the most popular group activities in the last decade, where players solve puzzles to escape a simulated scenario. These popular games are not only fun, but they may also offer a promising new way to measure personality behaviours. This paper explores the potential of a single-player digital 3D escape rooms (ERs) as a tool for evaluating personality behaviours using the Big Five personality traits model. The Big Five model evaluates an individual's behaviour based on five factors: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. While current assessment methods rely on self-reported questionnaires, digital 3D Escape Rooms (ER) might offer an alternative approach for evaluating personality behaviours by observing the player’s behaviour in the game. The present study reports one preliminary study in this direction, assessing the correlation between the behaviour in a digital 3D ER and the self-reported Openness to experience trait. A total of 52 students took part in this research. The results show that higher Openness scores are related to the behaviour in the game.