Emotions and personality traits in argumentation: An empirical evaluation1

Abstract

Abstract. Argumentation is a mechanism to support different forms of reasoning such as decision making and persuasion and always cast under the light of critical thinking. In the latest years, several computational approaches to argumentation have been proposed to detect conflicting information, take the best decision with respect to the available knowledge, and update our own beliefs when new information arrives. The common point of all these approaches is that they assume a purely rational behavior of the involved actors, be them humans or artificial agents. However, this is not the case as humans are proved to behave differently, mixing rational and emotional attitudes to guide their actions. Some works have claimed that there exists a strong connection between the argumentation process and the emotions felt by people involved in such process. We advocate a complementary, descriptive and experimental method, based on the collection of emotional data about the way human reasoners handle emotions during debate interactions. Across different debates, people's argumentation in plain English is correlated with the emotions automatically detected from the participants, their engagement in the debate, and the mental workload required to debate. Results show several correlations among emotions, engagement and mental workload with respect to the argumentation elements. For instance, when two opposite opinions are conflicting, this is reflected in a negative way on the debaters' emotions. Beside their theoretical value for validating and inspiring computational argumentation theory, these results have applied value for developing artificial agents meant to argue with human users or to assist users in the management of debates.

Impact of Argument Type and Concerns in Argumentation with a Chatbot

“…This is not surprising, however, concerns are often ignored when judging the effectiveness of arguments or choosing a strategy. There are some studies that make use of different personality traits of the user attributes in order to evaluate what sort of argument might be more effective for this particular person (for examples see [13,9,23,19]). However, computational argumentation largely focuses on sentimental [7], rhetorical [11] and structural [4] attributes of the argument, rather than attributes about the user.…”

Emotions in online debates: Tales from 4Forums and ConvinceMe

“…Past research has shown that the emotions reflected from the participants' arguments are strongly connected to the argumentation processes. If the arguments are in opposition, the emotions reflected from them tend to be negative related; similarly, the emotion tends to be positive if arguments support to each other (Benlamine et al, 2015; Villata et al, 2017). As an engine of argumentation, emotions play an active role in decision taking as modifiers of theory‐of‐mind models, goals and strategies (Martinovski & Mao, 2009).…”

Do Emotions, Nature Relatedness, and Conservation Concern Influence Students’ Evaluations of Arguments about Biodiversity Conservation?

“…This was only observed in the scenario in which participants were asked to evaluate an anti-conservation claim, so it is plausible that simply hearing an anticonservation claim elicited negative emotions. Indeed, Villata et al (2017) found that conflicting opinions during debate elicit negative emotions. Further, these negative emotions seemed to have compelled participants to evaluate the claim with more skepticism.…”