Paper Reading #31: Identifying emotional states using keystroke dynamics

References
Identifying emotional states using keystroke dynamics by Clayton Epp, Michael Lippold, and Regan L. Mandryk.  Presented at the CHI '11 Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems.


Author Bios

• Clayton Epp is a graduate student at the University of Saskatchewan and focuses on affective computing using unobstrusive technologies.
• Michael Lippold is a master's student at the University of Saskatchewan and has an undergraduate degree from the University of Calgary.
• Regan L. Mandryk is an Assistant Professor at the University of Saskatchewan and has a PhD from Simon Fraser University.

Summary

Hypothesis
It is possible to determine a person's emotional state based on their keystrokes.

Methods 
To test their hypothesis, researchers recruited participants for the study and had them install a piece of software that would run in the background. This piece of software would measure key duration and key latency throughout the user's day-to-day activities on their PC. The software would prompt the user through the day and ask the user how they were feeling at a certain time by asking them various questions in an emotional questionnaire. The user was then asked to type a randomly select portion from Alice in Wonderland. The results of this entire study were put together and analyzed in an attempt to discern the user's mood through their typing habits.

Results
The researchers used undersampling on many of the models to help make the data more meaningful in terms of detectable levels of emotion. They found that two of their "tired" models performed most accurately with the most consistency, and that models utilizing the undersampling performed better overall.

Contents 

There have been various methods of evaluating emotional activities that have seen varying rates of success, but they still exhibit one or both of two main problems preventing wide- scale use: they can be intrusive to the user, and can require specialized equipment that is expensive and not found in typical home or office environments. This system using key strokes is more intuitive, unobtrusive and has a wider range of users.

Discussion
I think this is a really cool topic and could be used to prevent people from making rash decisions when they are typing like they are distressed and I think that is awesome.