Cited by 0AI and HR TechnologiesPersonality Traits and PsychologyPsychological Testing and Assessment

From Tasks to Traits: Can LLMs Infer Personality From Brief Assessment Center Behavior?

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Härtel, Tobias Marc·2026·International Journal of Selection and Assessment

Abstract

Assessment centers (ACs) could provide behavioral foundations for trait assessment but demand substantial resources, especially the labor‐intensive human rating process. As organizations adopt large language models (LLMs) for automated assessment, we establish initial psychometric benchmarks for LLM‐based trait inference from AC behavior. We processed recordings from 363 participants in brief simulated online AC group discussions through an automated pipeline: Whisper (speech recognition), Pyannote (speaker diarization), and Gemini 2.0 Flash (trait inference across the Big Five, narcissism, and intelligence). As a human benchmark, eight trained raters (four aggregated per transcript) independently inferred the same traits from a subsample of 100 group discussion transcripts. Aggregating multiple LLM runs yielded high reliability across traits (ICC(3,4) = 0.75–0.92). LLM convergent validity with trait tests was modest but above chance for all traits except conscientiousness, and varied by trait observability: openness and intelligence ( r = 0.20), narcissism, extraversion, and agreeableness ( r = 0.12–0.16), emotional stability and conscientiousness ( r = 0.07–0.11). These findings lend support to AC behavior as a basis for measuring personality even under minimal information, with these validities likely a lower bound on what richer inputs would yield. Most notably, an LLM could infer personality from this behavior, with convergent validities descriptively higher than the human benchmark for most traits. Overall, constrained by discriminant validity, gender‐related adverse impact, and input dependencies (amount and clarity), the LLM trait inferences remained insufficient for standalone selection but can be produced at negligible marginal cost, positioning LLMs as a potential low‐cost contributor to multi‐source assessment pipelines.

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Crossref · 10.1111/ijsa.70074

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Research works printed but not linked: 5

  1. 10.1037/0021-9010.69.2.214 · DOI
  2. Lievens F., 2012, The Psychology of Assessment Centers, 68
  3. R Core Team, 2023, R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing
  4. R Studio Team, 2021, RStudio: Integrated Development for R
  5. Radford A., 2023, Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Machine Learning, 28492

Authors
Härtel, T. M.
Affiliations
Hochschule Osnabrück (DE)
Corresponding author
Härtel, Tobias Marc
Venue
International Journal of Selection and Assessment
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2026-07-13
Volume
34
Issue
3
ISSN
  • 0965-075X (ISSN-L)
  • 1468-2389
OpenAlex
W7168138516
Cited by
0
References
81
FWCI
0.00
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
International Journal of Selection and Assessment (publishedVersion, cc-by)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › AI and HR Technologies
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Traits and Psychology
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Psychological Testing and Assessment
Keywords
large language models, personality inference, assessment centers, Big Five personality traits, narcissism, intelligence, convergent validity, speech recognition, speaker diarization, adverse impact, multi-source assessment

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