Citation: Vahdat-Nejad, H.; Mansoor,
W.; Abbasi, S.; Hajiabadi, M.; Salmani,
F.; Azizi, F.; Mosafer, R.; Jamalian, M.;
Khosravi-Farsani, H. Impact of the
Internet of Things on Psychology: A
Survey. Smart Cities 2022, 5,
1193–1207. https://doi.org/
10.3390/smartcities5030060
Academic Editors: Phivos Mylonas,
Katia Lida Kermanidis and
Manolis Maragoudakis
Received: 29 July 2022
Accepted: 27 August 2022
Published: 14 September 2022
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4.0/).
Review
Impact of the Internet of Things on Psychology: A Survey
Hamed Vahdat-Nejad
1,
* , Wathiq Mansoor
2
, Sajedeh Abbasi
1
, Mahdi Hajiabadi
1
, Fatemeh Salmani
1
,
Faezeh Azizi
1
, Reyhane Mosafer
1
, Mohadese Jamalian
1
and Hadi Khosravi-Farsani
3
1
PerLab, Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Birjand, Birjand 9717434765, Iran
2
College of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Dubai,
Dubai P.O. Box 14143, United Arab Emirates
3
Faculty of Technology and Engineering, Shahrekord University, Shahrekord 8818634141, Iran
* Correspondence: vahdatnejad@birjand.ac.ir
Abstract:
The Internet of things (IoT) continues to “smartify” human life while influencing areas such
as industry, education, economy, business, medicine, and psychology. The introduction of the IoT in
psychology has resulted in various intelligent systems that aim to help people—particularly those
with special needs, such as the elderly, disabled, and children. This paper proposes a framework
to investigate the role and impact of the IoT in psychology from two perspectives: (1) the goals of
using the IoT in this area, and (2) the computational technologies used towards this purpose. To this
end, existing studies are reviewed from these viewpoints. The results show that the goals of using
the IoT can be identified as morale improvement, diagnosis, and monitoring. Moreover, the main
technical contributions of the related papers are system design, data mining, or hardware invention
and signal processing. Subsequently, unique features of state-of-the-art research in this area are
discussed, including the type and diversity of sensors, crowdsourcing, context awareness, fog and
cloud platforms, and inference. Our concluding remarks indicate that this area is in its infancy and,
consequently, the next steps of this research are discussed.
Keywords: Internet of things; psychology; survey; smart computing
1. Introduction
With developments and advances in sensors, communication technologies, and em-
bedded computers, smart objects (e.g., smartphones and smart devices) have become
popular [
1
]. There has been an increase in the interactions between smart objects and hu-
mans, which has resulted in the emergence of the Internet of things (IoT) [
2
]. The Internet of
things (IoT) is a network of smart things that can interact without human intervention [
3
].
The IoT has affected different aspects of human life and led to the Fourth Indus-
trial Revolution [
4
,
5
]. It has had different effects on various areas, such as industry [
6
–
9
],
transportation [
10
–
12
], smart homes [
13
–
16
], smart cities [
17
–
20
], the military [
21
–
23
],
business [
24
–
26
], tourism [
27
,
28
], education [
29
–
31
], art [
32
–
34
], healthcare [
35
,
36
], eco-
nomics [37,38], and psychology [39–41].
Psychology is an important area of human life affected by the IoT. Inner peace has
always been a human concern, for which the principles of psychology must be analyzed and
practiced [
42
]. Since there is a direct correlation between physical and mental health, many
mental problems—such as depression, neurological disorders, and stress—negatively affect
people’s physical health [
43
]. These problems also increase the chance of experiencing heart
disease, strokes, and cancers. “Psychology is the scientific study of behavior, experience,
and mental processes in all living creatures” [
44
]. According to statistics, people spend
a considerable time on smart devices such as smartphones; hence, numerous IoT-related
studies have been conducted in psychology. Indeed, IoT technology has come to the aid
of psychologists in analyzing and resolving prominent psychological problems. A few
review studies have addressed the IoT and psychology by focusing on equipment [
45
] and
Smart Cities 2022, 5, 1193–1207. https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities5030060 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/smartcities
