Psychology suggests that an individual’s language usage is conditioned by their life experiences and, consequently, reflects their personality. Inferring an individual’s personality traits from their language usage can then be used to predict behavior. Since individuals modulate their language based on all accumulated life experiences, identifying markers for the desired traits need to be manually isolated for analysis. Well-established personality models–such as Big5, MBTI, and Dark Triad–measure using carefully curated psychological questionnaires that help probe personality traits. The inherent relationship with language then provides an avenue for passive assessment of these traits. The ability to predict behavior from personality traits can be used for psychological profiling in both medical and forensic settings, as well as commercial.

Grounded in psychology and linguistics, research on this topic by FINS aims to enhance the current state of behavior analysis from uncontrolled raw text samples to enable human interpretation and leverage recent advances in natural language processing/inferencing along with machine learning and artificial intelligence.