An Experimental-Psychological Approach for the Development of Character Computing

Progress in the field of computer science is paving ways for collecting and analyzing huge amounts of data from people from all over the globe almost in any situation be it at home or at work. Data collection and analysis may include the overt behavior of the user but may also explore the hidden affective, motivational and cognitive human factors. Making reliable predictions about human behavior thus means to take overt behavior as well as implicit human factors into consideration. Psychologically speaking, this means to explore the user’s whole character—his/her personality traits, his/her current cognitive, affective, and motivational states as well as the user’s cultural and social embedding—to best predict behavior in accordance with the user’s individual needs, preferences, and subjective well-being. This raises questions of how Character Computing as a novel and holistic approach of human behavior computing can be achieved without violating ethical standards and the user’s privacy. This introductory chapter will provide answers to these questions. In the first part of the chapter, it will be discussed how psychological theories of human behavior have inspired the fields of Cognitive Computing, Affective Computing, and Personality Computing. Next, a holistic psychological definition of human behavior will be provided that describes human behavior in the context of the Character–Behavior–Situation triad. It will be discussed how psychological understanding of human behavior can guide and improve future research in the domain of Character Computing. Finally, an experimental-psychological framework for Character Computing will be discussed that considers Character Computing from an interdisciplinary perspective.