Psychology-informed Recommender Systems

Abstract

Personalized recommender systems have become indispensable in today’s online world. Most of today’s recommendation algorithms are data-driven and based on behavioral data. While such systems can produce useful recommendations, they are often uninterpretable, black-box models, which do not incorporate the underlying cognitive reasons for user behavior in the algorithms’ design. The aim of this survey is to present a thorough review of the state of the art of recommender systems that leverage psychological constructs and theories to model and predict user behavior and improve the recommendation process. We call such systems psychology-informed recommender systems. The survey identifies three categories of psychology-informed recommender systems: cognition-inspired, personality-aware, and affectaware recommender systems. Moreover, for each category, Elisabeth Lex, Dominik Kowald, Paul Seitlinger, Thi Ngoc Trang Tran, Alexander Felfernig and Markus Schedl (2021), “Psychology-informed Recommender Systems”, Foundations and Trends® in Information Retrieval: Vol. 15, No. 2, pp 134–242. DOI: 10.1561/1500000090. Full text available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/1500000090