Measuring the strength of threats, rewards, and appeals in persuasive negotiation dialogues

Abstract

The aim of this article is to propose a model for the measurement of the strength of rhetorical arguments (i.e., threats, rewards, and appeals), which are used in persuasive negotiation dialogues when a proponent agent tries to convince his opponent to accept a proposal. Related articles propose a calculation based on the components of the rhetorical arguments, that is, the importance of the goal of the opponent and the certainty level of the beliefs that make up the argument. Our proposed model is based on the pre-conditions of credibility and preferability stated by Guerini and Castelfranchi. Thus, we suggest the use of two new criteria for the strength calculation: the credibility of the proponent and the status of the goal of the opponent in the goal processing cycle. We use three scenarios in order to illustrate our proposal. Besides, the model is empirically evaluated and the results demonstrate that the proposed model is more efficient than previous works of the state of the art in terms of numbers of negotiation cycles, number of exchanged arguments, and number of reached agreements.