Abstract

Previous research has shown that sending personalized messages consistent with the recipient's psychological profile is essential to activate the change toward a healthy lifestyle. In this paper we present an example of how artificial intelligence can support psychology in this process, illustrating the development of a probabilistic predictor in the form of a Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN). The predictor regards the change in the intention to do home-based physical activity after message exposure. The data used to construct the predictor are those of a study on the effects of framing in communication to promote physical activity at home during the Covid-19 lockdown. The theoretical reference is that of psychosocial research on the effects of framing, according to which similar communicative contents formulated in different ways can be differently effective depending on the characteristics of the recipient. Study participants completed a first questionnaire aimed at measuring the psychosocial dimensions involved in doing physical activity at home. Next, they read recommendation messages formulated with one of four different frames (gain, non-loss, non-gain, and loss). Finally, they completed a second questionnaire measuring their perception of the messages and again the intention to exercise at home. The collected data were analyzed to elicit a DBN, i.e., a probabilistic structure representing the interrelationships between all the dimensions considered in the study. The adopted procedure was aimed to achieve a good balance between explainability and predictivity. The elicited DBN was found to be consistent with the psychosocial theories assumed as reference and able to predict the effectiveness of the different messages starting from the relevant psychosocial dimensions of the recipients. In the next steps of our project, the DBN will form the basis for the training of a Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) system for the synthesis of automatic interaction strategies. In turn, the DRL system will train a Deep Neural Network (DNN) that will guide the online interaction process. The discussion focuses on the advantages of the proposed procedure in terms of interpretability and effectiveness.

Highlights

  • Doing physical activity is essential for people’s health and wellbeing (Hyde et al, 2013; Rhodes et al, 2017)

  • We developed a probabilistic graphical structure, i.e., a Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN; Dagum et al, 1995; Murphy, 2012), as a first step in a process aimed at harnessing psychological models in the construction of automated interaction strategies via artificial intelligence

  • They were automatically and randomly assigned to four different experimental conditions, which consisted in being asked to read differently framed messages regarding the physical and psychological outcomes of exercising at home (Message Intervention). They were required to fill in a second questionnaire measuring their evaluation of the messages and again the psychosocial dimensions involved in home-based physical activity, to assess whether they had changed after message exposure (Time 2)

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Summary

Introduction

Doing physical activity is essential for people’s health and wellbeing (Hyde et al, 2013; Rhodes et al, 2017). Even when we are aware of the benefits associated with physical activity, this awareness does not necessarily translate into consistent behavior This is because the psychological factors related to physical activity are many and their relationships are complex. A full understanding of the theoretical guidance and practices on designing automatic interaction systems to support the increase in people’s physical activity is still lacking (Zhang et al, 2020). Such understanding should include the development of empirically testable theoretical models, which consider the psychosocial processes related to behavior planning and how communication can influence it

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