PsychoGAT: A Novel Psychological Measurement Paradigm through Interactive Fiction Games with LLM Agents

TL;DR

PsychoGAT leverages large language models to transform standardized psychological assessments into engaging, personalized interactive fiction games, improving user engagement and psychometric validity.

Contribution

This work introduces PsychoGAT, a novel framework that uses LLMs as both psychologists and game designers to gamify psychological assessments effectively.

Findings

PsychoGAT achieves high reliability and validity in assessments.

Human evaluators rate PsychoGAT's content as coherent and engaging.

PsychoGAT enhances user interest and immersion in psychological testing.

Abstract

Psychological measurement is essential for mental health, self-understanding, and personal development. Traditional methods, such as self-report scales and psychologist interviews, often face challenges with engagement and accessibility. While game-based and LLM-based tools have been explored to improve user interest and automate assessment, they struggle to balance engagement with generalizability. In this work, we propose PsychoGAT (Psychological Game AgenTs) to achieve a generic gamification of psychological assessment. The main insight is that powerful LLMs can function both as adept psychologists and innovative game designers. By incorporating LLM agents into designated roles and carefully managing their interactions, PsychoGAT can transform any standardized scales into personalized and engaging interactive fiction games. To validate the proposed method, we conduct psychometric evaluations to assess its effectiveness and employ human evaluators to examine the generated content across various psychological constructs, including depression, cognitive distortions, and personality traits. Results demonstrate that PsychoGAT serves as an effective assessment tool, achieving statistically significant excellence in psychometric metrics such as reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. Moreover, human evaluations confirm PsychoGAT's enhancements in content coherence, interactivity, interest, immersion, and satisfaction.