Combining psychological models with machine learning to better predict people's decisions

Creating agents that pro ̄ciently interact with people is critical for many applications. Towards creating these agents, models are needed that e®ectively predict people's decisions in a variety of problems. To date, two approaches have been suggested to generally describe people's decision behavior. These models could either be based on theoretical rational behavior, or psychological models such as those based on bounded rationality. A second approach focuses on creating models based exclusively on observations of people's behavior. At the forefront of these type of methods are various machine learning algorithms. This paper explores how these two approaches can be compared and combined in di®erent types of domains. In relatively simple domains, both psychological models and machine learning yield clear prediction models with nearly identical results. In more complex domains, psychological or machine learning alone cannot accurately predict people's decisions. However, improved models can be created by using machine learning techniques to re ̄ne parameters within psychological models. In the most complex domains, the exact action predicted by psychological models is not even clear, and machine learning models are even less accurate. Nonetheless, by creating hybrid methods that incorporate features from psychological models in conjunction with machine learning we can create signi ̄cantly improved models for predicting people's decisions. To demonstrate these claims, we present a survey of previous and new results, taken from representative domains ranging from a relatively simple optimization problem, a more complex path selection domain, and complex domains of negotiation and coordination without communication. Combining Psychological Models with Machine Learning 1 Running head: COMBINING PSYCHOLOGICAL MODELS WITH MACHINE LEARNING Combining Psychological Models with Machine Learning to Better Predict People’s Decisions Avi Rosenfeld1, Inon Zukerman3, Amos Azaria2, Sarit Kraus2,4 1Department of Industrial Engineering Jerusalem College of Technology, Jerusalem, Israel 91160 2Department of Computer Science Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel 92500 3 Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Ariel University Center of Samaria, Ariel, Israel 40700 4 Institute for Advanced Computer Studies University of Maryland, College Park, USA 20742 [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Combining Psychological Models with Machine Learning 2