In recent years, personality detection — the use of computational methods to automatically determine an individual’s personality from various data sources — has seen widespread adoption across a variety of fields. This paper argues that despite their widespread use, conventional personality detection methods are limited in their ability to grasp human personality. Specifically, three limitations of conventional personality detection methods are discussed: (1) their limited ability to grasp the complexity of human personality due to their reliance on predetermined categories, known as pre-structured methods; (2) their inability to grasp the impact of social and cultural context on human personality, and (3) their disregard of the performative nature of human personality in online environments. Drawing on insights from anthropology and social psychology, three solutions to these limitations are proposed: (1) embracing naturalistic inquiry to capture the complexity of human personality, (2) considering the contextual influences on personality expression through multimodal methods and ethnographic research; and (3) accounting for the systematic biases present in personality in online environments in how we present our results and draw conclusions. Integrating these solutions would allow researchers to develop a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of human personality in a wide variety of fields.
Pas et al. (2026) studied this question.