How to Win Arguments

Klaus Weber,Wolfgang Minker,Niklas Rach,Elisabeth André

doi:10.1007/s13222-020-00345-9

Klaus Weber, Wolfgang Minker + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13222-020-00345-9

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Journal: Datenbank-Spektrum	Publication Date: Jun 16, 2020
Citations: 5	License type: open-access

Affiliation: University of Augsburg, University of Ulm

Abstract

People make decisions every day or form an opinion based on persuasion processes, whether through advertising, planning leisure activities with friends or public speeches. Most of the time, however, subliminal persuasion processes triggered by behavioral cues (rather than the content of the message) play a far more important role than most people are aware of. To raise awareness of the different aspects of persuasion (how and what), we present a multimodal dialog system consisting of two virtual agents that use synthetic speech in a discussion setting to present pros and cons to a user on a controversial topic. The agents are able to adapt their emotions based on explicit feedback of the users to increase their perceived persuasiveness during interaction using Reinforcement Learning.

Highlights

The communication of opinions, along with different proand counter-arguments, is an important factor in the process of opinion building
We concluded that the utilized methods are generally suitable for our task but that the perceived low naturalness indicates room for improvement in view of the perceived quality of the argumentation
Argument content not considered in the emotion policy

Summary

Introduction

The communication of opinions, along with different proand counter-arguments, is an important factor in the process of opinion building. People tend to get persuaded by far more than just the rational content of arguments. Presenting content-wise identical arguments in different ways, such as body language, appropriate gazing behavior as well as emotions can have a different effect on the audience’s opinion towards the argument and overall stance of the topic [1, 4, 6] and, the persuasive effectiveness of the conveyed content [25]. In public speeches and political debates, it is important what is said (semantic content), and how something is said. Looking at recent public speeches, especially by politicians, it appears that people are more likely to be influenced by the behavior or authority of speakers than by the content of the message they convey.

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