Abstract
We explore the question of whether machines can infer information about our psychological traits or mental states by observing samples of our behaviour gathered from our online activities. Ongoing technical advances across a range of research communities indicate that machines are now able to access this information, but the extent to which this is possible and the consequent implications have not been well explored. We begin by highlighting the urgency of asking this question, and then explore its conceptual underpinnings, in order to help emphasise the relevant issues. To answer the question, we review a large number of empirical studies, in which samples of behaviour are used to automatically infer a range of psychological constructs, including affect and emotions, aptitudes and skills, attitudes and orientations (e.g. values and sexual orientation), personality, and disorders and conditions (e.g. depression and addiction). We also present a general perspective that can bring these disparate studies together and allow us to think clearly about their philosophical and ethical implications, such as issues related to consent, privacy, and the use of persuasive technologies for controlling human behaviour.
Highlights
Recent news stories have brought to the public’s attention a research trend that has been developing for several years across different research communities, and which is aimed at providing machines with the capability to infer information about the mental states and psychological traits of their users.1the controversial technology behind these announcements is representative of a wider set of research interests than is captured by any specific news story, and is carried out for very different reasons by different scientific communities
This is because the digital footprints left behind during our online interactions with intelligent systems can be treated as samples of behaviour, and in turn used to infer additional psychological information about each individual, under certain conditions outlined later in this paper (Sect. 3)
Our review was undertaken in order to answer the question ‘can machines infer information about the psychological traits or mental states of individual users, on the basis of samples of their behaviour?’ The findings in the previous section support an affirmative answer to this question for a variety of psychological constructs
Summary
Recent news stories have brought to the public’s attention a research trend that has been developing for several years across different research communities, and which is aimed at providing machines with the capability to infer information about the mental states and psychological traits of their users.1the controversial technology behind these announcements is representative of a wider set of research interests than is captured by any specific news story, and is carried out for very different reasons by different scientific communities. 1934) state that the collection and analysis of human activities mediated by online platforms is “changing the paradigm in the social sciences, as it undergoes a transition from small-scale studies, typically employing questionnaires or lab-based observations and experiments, to large-scale studies, in which researchers observe the behavior of thousands or millions of individuals and search for statistical regularities and underlying principles.” This is because the digital footprints left behind during our online interactions with intelligent systems can be treated as samples of behaviour, and in turn used to infer additional psychological information about each individual, under certain conditions outlined later in this paper In a review of how digital footprints can be used to predict personality traits, for example, Lambiotte and Kosinski (2014, p. 1934) state that the collection and analysis of human activities mediated by online platforms is “changing the paradigm in the social sciences, as it undergoes a transition from small-scale studies, typically employing questionnaires or lab-based observations and experiments, to large-scale studies, in which researchers observe the behavior of thousands or millions of individuals and search for statistical regularities and underlying principles.” This is because the digital footprints left behind during our online interactions with intelligent systems can be treated as samples of behaviour, and in turn used to infer additional psychological information about each individual, under certain conditions outlined later in this paper (Sect. 3). There are vast datasets of such behavioural samples, which are gathered from online repositories, social media APIs, or IoT enabled devices (among other sources), and which make these studies possible
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