Cambridge University researchers develop happiness app
A happiness app designed to monitor the happiness of its users has been developed by researchers at Cambridge University in an effort to boost health and wellbeing.
EmotionSense combines location data and ambient background noise with individuals own perception of their frame of mind to produce a report on the persons mood.
Variables used to inform the final analysis include time, volume of texts and calls, movement, location and who they are interacting with.
This sees the app activate a sensor for a week when first activated, drawing data from the environment and marrying it up with the user’s emotional state.
From there individuals are asked to complete a life satisfaction survey which informs results from a second sensor – and so the process repeats for a period of eight weeks.
Dr Jason Rentfrow, a senior lecturer in the department of psychology at Cambridge University, said: “Most other attempts at software like this are coarse-grained in terms of their view of what a feeling is.
“Many just look at emotions in terms of feeling happy, sad, angry or neutral. The aim here is to use a more flexible approach, to collect data that shows how moods vary between people. That is something which we think is quite unique to the system we have designed.”