2,332 research outputs found
Towards Computational Persuasion via Natural Language Argumentation Dialogues
Computational persuasion aims to capture the human ability to persuade through argumentation for applications such as behaviour change in healthcare (e.g. persuading people to take more exercise or eat more healthily). In this paper, we review research in computational persuasion that incorporates domain modelling (capturing arguments and counterarguments that can appear in a persuasion dialogues), user modelling (capturing the beliefs and concerns of the persuadee), and dialogue strategies (choosing the best moves for the persuader to maximize the chances that the persuadee is persuaded). We discuss evaluation of prototype systems that get the user’s counterarguments by allowing them to select them from a menu. Then we consider how this work might be enhanced by incorporating a natural language interface in the form of an argumentative chatbot
What changed your mind : the roles of dynamic topics and discourse in argumentation process
In our world with full of uncertainty, debates and argumentation contribute to the progress of science and society. Despite of the in- creasing attention to characterize human arguments, most progress made so far focus on the debate outcome, largely ignoring the dynamic patterns in argumentation processes. This paper presents a study that automatically analyzes the key factors in argument persuasiveness, beyond simply predicting who will persuade whom. Specifically, we propose a novel neural model that is able to dynamically track the changes of latent topics and discourse in argumentative conversations, allowing the investigation of their roles in influencing the outcomes of persuasion. Extensive experiments have been conducted on argumentative conversations on both social media and supreme court. The results show that our model outperforms state-of-the-art models in identifying persuasive arguments via explicitly exploring dynamic factors of topic and discourse. We further analyze the effects of topics and discourse on persuasiveness, and find that they are both useful -- topics provide concrete evidence while superior discourse styles may bias participants, especially in social media arguments. In addition, we draw some findings from our empirical results, which will help people better engage in future persuasive conversations
Towards a framework for computational persuasion with applications in behaviour change
Persuasion is an activity that involves one party trying to induce another party to believe something or to do something. It is an important and multifaceted human facility. Obviously, sales and marketing is heavily dependent on persuasion. But many other activities involve persuasion such as a doctor persuading a patient to drink less alcohol, a road safety expert persuading drivers to not text while driving, or an online safety expert persuading users of social media sites to not reveal too much personal information online. As computing becomes involved in every sphere of life, so too is persuasion a target for applying computer-based solutions. An automated persuasion system (APS) is a system that can engage in a dialogue with a user (the persuadee) in order to persuade the persuadee to do (or not do) some action or to believe (or not believe) something. To do this, an APS aims to use convincing arguments in order to persuade the persuadee. Computational persuasion is the study of formal models of dialogues involving arguments and counterarguments, of user models, and strategies, for APSs. A promising application area for computational persuasion is in behaviour change. Within healthcare organizations, government agencies, and non-governmental agencies, there is much interest in changing behaviour of particular groups of people away from actions that are harmful to themselves and/or to others around them
Impact of Argument Type and Concerns in Argumentation with a Chatbot
Conversational agents, also known as chatbots, are versatile tools that have
the potential of being used in dialogical argumentation. They could possibly be
deployed in tasks such as persuasion for behaviour change (e.g. persuading
people to eat more fruit, to take regular exercise, etc.) However, to achieve
this, there is a need to develop methods for acquiring appropriate arguments
and counterargument that reflect both sides of the discussion. For instance, to
persuade someone to do regular exercise, the chatbot needs to know
counterarguments that the user might have for not doing exercise. To address
this need, we present methods for acquiring arguments and counterarguments, and
importantly, meta-level information that can be useful for deciding when
arguments can be used during an argumentation dialogue. We evaluate these
methods in studies with participants and show how harnessing these methods in a
chatbot can make it more persuasive
Presenting Arguments as Fictive Dialogue
Presentation of an argument can take many different forms ranging from a monologue to advanced graphics and diagrams. This paper investigates the presentation of one or more arguments in the form of a fictive dialogue. This technique was already employed by Plato, who used fictive conversations between Socrates and his contemporaries to put his arguments forward. Ever since, there have been influential authors – including Desiderius Erasmus, Sir Thomas More and Mark Twain – that have used dialogue in this way. In this paper, we define the notion of a fictive dialogue, motivate it is as a topic for investigation, and present a qualitative and quantitative study of five fictive dialogues by well-known authors. We conclude by indicating how our preliminary and ongoing investigations may inform the development of systems that automatically generate argumentative fictive dialogue
Computational Persuasion using Chatbots based on Crowdsourced Argument Graphs & Concerns
As computing becomes involved in every sphere of life, so too is persuasion
a target for applying computer-based solutions. Conversational agents, also
known as chatbots, are versatile tools that have the potential of being used
as agents in dialogical argumentation systems where the chatbot acts as the
persuader and the human agent as the persuadee and thereby offer a costeffective and scalable alternative to in-person consultations
To allow the user to type his or her argument in free-text input (as opposed
to selecting arguments from a menu) the chatbot needs to be able to (1)
“understand” the user’s concern he or she is raising in their argument and (2)
give an appropriate counterargument that addresses the user’s concern.
In this thesis I describe how to (1) acquire arguments for the construction
of the chatbot’s knowledge base with the help of crowdsourcing, (2) how to
automatically identify the concerns that arguments address, and (3) how to
construct the chatbot’s knowledge base in the form of an argument graph that
can be used during persuasive dialogues with users.
I evaluated my methods in four case studies that covered several domains
(physical activity, meat consumption, UK University Fees and COVID-19
vaccination). In each case study I implemented a chatbot that engaged in argumentative dialogues with participants and measured the participants’ change of
stance before and after engaging in a chat with the bot. In all four case studies
the chatbot showed statistically significant success persuading people to either
consider changing their behaviour or to change their stance
Argument Strength is in the Eye of the Beholder: Audience Effects in Persuasion
Americans spend about a third of their time online, with many participating
in online conversations on social and political issues. We hypothesize that
social media arguments on such issues may be more engaging and persuasive than
traditional media summaries, and that particular types of people may be more or
less convinced by particular styles of argument, e.g. emotional arguments may
resonate with some personalities while factual arguments resonate with others.
We report a set of experiments testing at large scale how audience variables
interact with argument style to affect the persuasiveness of an argument, an
under-researched topic within natural language processing. We show that belief
change is affected by personality factors, with conscientious, open and
agreeable people being more convinced by emotional arguments.Comment: European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics
(EACL 2017
Argumentation Mining in User-Generated Web Discourse
The goal of argumentation mining, an evolving research field in computational
linguistics, is to design methods capable of analyzing people's argumentation.
In this article, we go beyond the state of the art in several ways. (i) We deal
with actual Web data and take up the challenges given by the variety of
registers, multiple domains, and unrestricted noisy user-generated Web
discourse. (ii) We bridge the gap between normative argumentation theories and
argumentation phenomena encountered in actual data by adapting an argumentation
model tested in an extensive annotation study. (iii) We create a new gold
standard corpus (90k tokens in 340 documents) and experiment with several
machine learning methods to identify argument components. We offer the data,
source codes, and annotation guidelines to the community under free licenses.
Our findings show that argumentation mining in user-generated Web discourse is
a feasible but challenging task.Comment: Cite as: Habernal, I. & Gurevych, I. (2017). Argumentation Mining in
User-Generated Web Discourse. Computational Linguistics 43(1), pp. 125-17
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