Multiple agents in happiness evaluation

Abstract

Nowadays, there is a tendency for most of the developed countries abort the method of using GDP (Gross Domestics Product) to evaluate the living standard of their citizen, in stead, they prefer evaluating their happiness level by means of GHI (Gross Happiness Index)1 because this reason, evaluating one’s happiness is becoming the recent hot issue that there is a increasing number of sociologists and psychologists, or even economists are carrying a lot of research topics on it. So this year long project is going to explore how information technology is help to investigate such a hot issue. The most common method for psychological evaluation is using questionnaire. The problem of traditional online questionnaire is that clients are easily bored by the plain text interface and such a long and hard coded question system. It will badly affect the result that is collected and make an incorrect judgment. In this project we are going to simulate a group of software experts which has it own theory on the definition of happiness. Each expert will flow some questions to consult the client. Without the help of others, the being interviewed client can finish the interview by interacting with those animated agents. In such an environment client are interested in answering the questions and more likely to provide proper answer that are truly reflect their mental state.