Agents with Personality: Negotiating Agents and Marital Stability

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Agents with PersonalityNegotiating Agents and
Marital Stability

• Vicki H. Allan
• Sponsored by CURI
• (Community/University Research Initiative)

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An Agent in its Environment
AGENT
action output
Sensor Input
ENVIRONMENT
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• Agent enjoys the following properties
• autonomy - agents operate without the direct
  intervention of humans or others, and have some
  kind of control over their actions and internal
  state
• social ability - agents interact with other
  agents (and possibly humans) via some kind of
  agent-communication language
• reactivity agents perceive their environment and
  respond in a timely fashion to changes that occur
  in it
• pro-activeness agents do not simply act in
  response to their environment, they are able to
  exhibit goal-directed behaviour by taking
  initiative. (Wooldridge and Jennings, 1995)

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Agents

• Need for computer systems to act in our best
  interests
• The issues addressed in multiagent systems have
  profound implications for our understanding of
  ourselves. Wooldridge
• Example how do you make a decision about buying
  a car

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Agent Environments

• not have complete control (influence only)
• (heating in Old Main)
• deterministic vs non-deterministic effect
• accessible (get complete state info) vs
  inaccessible environment (stock market)
• episodic vs non-episodic (history sensitive)
  (grades in class)

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• Emotional agents
• A computable science of emotions
• Virtual actors
• Listen through speech recognition software to
  people
• Respond, in real time, with morphing faces,
  music, text, and speech
• manifest temperament control of emotions

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• BDI (Belief-Desire-Intention) architectures
• High-level specifications practical component of
  an architecture for a resource-bounded agent.
• It performs means-end analysis, weighing of
  competing alternatives for achieving a specific
  goal (desire).
• Beliefs information the agent has about the
  world
• Desires state of affairs that the agent would
  wish to bring about
• Intentions desires the agent has committed to
  achieve lead to an action, options consistent
• intentions play a critical role in practical
  reasoning - limits options, simpler, must be
  updated, not persist too long

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Idea What if we programmed an agent to act like
a person in a social situation? Could a person
learn something valuable by seeing his behavior?
Could a person benefit by replaying the situation
using a new set of behaviours?
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Program Agents with Personality and Emotion

• Bob and Alice are considering marriage.
• Evaluate their personalities
• Agent Bob and Agent Alice
• Give Agents a problem and view how they negotiate.

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Goal Create better communication
My wife and I had words, but I never got to use
mine. -Fibber McGee
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Goal Create more realistic expectations

• Young girl Is it true, Mom, I heard that in some
  parts of Africa a woman doesnt know her husband
  until she marries him?
• Mom That happens in every country, dear.

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Happiness is a function of expectation

• relative to what you expected

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Goal help an individual to find a compatible mate

• It was a mixed marriage. Im human, he was a
  Klingon.
• -Carol Leifer.

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Marital Research

• How a couple differs is not so important (as
  there will always be differences).
• What is important is how they deal with those
  differences.

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Goals of this research

• Model human interaction reliably
• Help individuals make appropriate marital
  decisions
• Help individual to change his/her destructive
  habits

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Other possible uses

• Evaluate group dynamics before space shuttle,
  for example.
• Train individual to deal with emergencies by
  simulating various emergencies. Believability is
  key.
• Teacher training classroom management.

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How differ from other agent interactions?

• In interpersonal conflicts, the winner may
  actually lose. (agree to watch the movie, but be
  poor company)
• The synergy of two peoples ideas could be better
  than either alone.
• Competing with people usually deteriorates the
  quality of the relationship in other areas.
• Finding a common solution may enable a couple to
  grow together rather than apart. (e.g. finding a
  common activity)

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Why is research valuable?

• Of first marriages, roughly 40-50 will end in
  divorce.
• Marital problems/divorce
• lower work productivity
• mental problems
• physical problems
• anti-social behavior
• poverty
• low self-esteem

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Several studies suggest

• Researchers can predict which marriages will end
  in failure from information gathered before the
  couple marries.
• Tell people they are at substantially greater
  risk for divorce
• Told couples argue most about children and money,
  but some believe how they argue is most important.

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Interaction Patterns

• speaker/listener (take roles)
• criticism
• defensiveness
• contempt
• stonewalling (listener withdrawal emotionally and
  perhaps physically)
• kitchen sink (prior complaints brought up)

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Modeling Emotions

• Emotions are important in giving Disney
  characters the illusion of life.
• Believability vs realism may be better to use
  simplified, exaggerated characters.

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Which emotions to model?

• Joy
• Fear/anxiety
• Like/dislike
• anger
• shame/remorse
• startle

• interest
• sadness
• disgust/contempt
• shyness
• love

Other systems have as many as 25 emotions
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How to Combine Emotions

• Winner take all ignore all but the highest
  intensity emotion
• Additive but may be confusing to model joy and
  sadness simulataneously
• Logarithmic log(2emotion1 2emotion2)
• Focus kicking example

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How express emotions?

• Facial expressions
• What the character does
• How he does it
• What words are chosen
• emotions are integral, cannot be removed but
  reaction to emotion is highly dependent on
  personality and other features

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How created

• Reilly demons exist which trigger emotion
  structure in response to a failed goal. Emotion
  is created, but must be queried by action
  component.
• Also important is surprise, importance of goal,
  difference in emotion felt with success or
  failure of same goal. (e.g., goal to have
  companion)

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Goals

• Intensity
• Chance of succeeding
• Emotions generated when fail
• Emotions generated when chance of succeeding
  increases/decreases.

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Behavior Features map emotions to actions

• type (cheerful, friendly, aggressive, defensive)
• intensity
• direction who is behavior directed towards
• cause what is the cause of the behavior

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What kind of transformations?

• Decay all at same rate?
• Combine
• Filter
• Idea create an algebra of emotions through
  matrix manipulation

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What effects emotions?

• Personality each personality type will express
  emotions in its own way.
• relationships affect what emotions are felt and
  how strongly
• memory previous experiences (Were you angry
  when the first telemarketer called?)

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Concerns

• Cardboard personalities?
• Different personalities/scenarios?
• If we allow the user to control an agent, can the
  personality still be seen? (Alphawolves)
• How do we test it? (subjective tests?)

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• After a quarrel, a husband said to his wife, You
  know, I was a fool when I married you. The wife
  replied, Yes dear, but I was in love and didnt
  notice.
• I married Mr Right. I just didnt know his first
  name was Always.