The papers in this special section focus on personality analysis. Automatic analysis of videos to characterize human behavior has become an active area of research with applications in affective computing, human-machine interfaces, gaming, security, marketing, and health, just to mention a few. Research advances in multimedia information processing, computer vision and pattern recognition have lead to established methodologies that are able to successfully recognize consciously executed actions, or intended movements (e.g., gestures, actions, interactions with objects and other people). However, recently there has been much progress in terms of computational approaches to characterize sub-conscious behaviors, which may be revealing aptitudes or competence, hidden intentions, and personality traits. Much remains to be done still, but it is essential nowadays to have a compilation of cutting edge work in this direction to identify potential opportunities and challenges involved. In this line, we edited a special issue on automatic methods for apparent personality analysis. Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving.