Does Personality Influence the Usage of Static Analysis Tools? An Explorative Experiment

There are many techniques to improve software quality. One is using automatic static analysis tools. We have observed, however, that despite the low-cost help they offer, these tools areunderused and often discourage beginners. There is evidence that personality traits influence the perceived usability of a software. Thus, to support beginners better, we need to understand how theworkflow of people with different prevalent personality traits using these tools varies. For this purpose, we observed users’ solution strategies and correlated them with their prevalent personality traits in an exploratory study with student participants within a controlled experiment. We gathered data by screen capturing and chat protocols as well as a Big Five personality traits test. We found strong correlations between particular personality traits and different strategies of removing the findings of static code analysis as well as between personality and tool utilization. Based on that, we offer take-away improvement suggestions. Our results imply that developers should be aware of these solution strategies and use this information to build tools that are more appealing to people with different prevalent personality traits.