infusing humor in unexpected events

Infusing Humor in Unexpected Events

Alessandro Valitutti Tony Veale

July 20, 2016

Outline1. Context: Humor facilitation2. Experiment: Adding a fictional commentary to

an interactive animation3. Discussion: Current limitations, next steps, and

conclusions

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1. Context

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Humor Facilitation(Nijholt 2014): Towards Humor Modelling and Facilitation

in Smart Environments

“Now that we can design and control our environments similar to our control of our writings, can we design humorous events just as we can design humorous texts?”“We looked at humor as it can emerge accidentally or created intentionally during our daily activities in our physical world. [...] In the former case it can lead to funny situations, in the latter it is aimed at creating funny situations.”“We think that artificial environments [...] can have the possibility to create humorous events and interactions [...] by introducing ambiguities and incongruities in these environments.”

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Humor Facilitation(Nijholt 2014): Towards Humor Modelling and Facilitation

in Smart Environments

“Now that we can design and control our environments similar to our control of our writings, can we design humorous events just as we can design humorous texts?”“We looked at humor as it can emerge accidentally or created intentionally during our daily activities in our physical world. [...] In the former case it can lead to funny situations, in the latter it is aimed at creating funny situations.”“We think that artificial environments [...] can have the possibility to create humorous events and interactions [...] by introducing ambiguities and incongruities in these environments.”

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detecting

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Humor Facilitation

Humorous Reframing

“Fictionalization”

Humorous Reframing(Attardo 2014): Encyclopedia of Humor Studies

“Reframing is a term that signifies a shift in perspective or understanding of a situation. [= frame shifting or re-interpretation]”

“Humorous reframing occurs when the shift in perspective or understanding is experienced as humorous.”

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Agneta and Frida

Picture from Höök et al. (2000).July 20, 2016

Pelicans

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Click here to play the video

Cat at the Door

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Click here to play the video

Mediators and FacilitatorsIn distributed computing:

Mediators and facilitators are components designed to ease the coordination and the communication among agents (Shen and Norrie, 1997: Facilitator, Mediator or Autonomous Agents)

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Mediators and ModeratorsIn social psychology:(Baron and Kenny, 1986: The Moderator-Mediator

Variable Distinction in Social Psychological Research)

“A variable may be said to function as a mediator to the extent that it accounts for the relation between [two variables]."

“A moderator is a [...] variable that affects the direction [...] of the relation between [two variables]”

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Mediators and ModeratorsIn Humor Studies

(Alden et al., 2000: The Effects of Incongruity, Surprise

and Positive Moderators on Perceived

Humor in Television Advertising)

“Surprise plays a mediating role in the incongruity-humor relationship.”

“Playfulness moderates the surprise-humor link in a positive manner”Nijholt’ appropriateness of humorous acts is another type of moderator July 20, 2016

DefinitionsHumorous response: mirthful laughter (characterized by probability and intensity)Humor: capability of inducing a humorous response (See. Attardo 2014: perlocutionary definiton of [humorous text: a text] whose purpose is to produce the perception of humor)Facilitation: positive moderationHumor facilitation: positive moderation of the link between surprise and dimension (either probability or intensity) of humorous responseHumor facilitator: agent capable of performing humor facilitation

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2. Experiment

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Research QuestionLet us suppose:1. to have an interactive situation containing

unpredictable events;2. to be able to add textual comments reframing the

situation as a fictional script

Is the fictional commentary capable of performing humor facilitation?

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Methodology Implementation of three versions of the same interactive animation (with and without textual commentary)Crowdsourcing recruiting of 40 subjects and online evaluationForm with questions about humor and surpriseTwo derived variables for measuring the probability (humorousness) and the intensity (funniness) of the humorous responseData analysis: hypothesis testing

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Animations

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• Animation 1: No Text• Animation 2: Bully• Animation 3: Love

Questions to the Subjects: Humor

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Questions to the Subjects: Surprise

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Example of Output Data

HumorousResponse

HumorTerm

Humor(Intensity)

Surprise (Yes/No)

Surprise(Intensity)

No No 0 No 0

Mood Humorous 3 Yes 2

Smile Hilarious 4 Yes 3

Smile Funny 2 Yes 3

Mood Funny 2 Yes 2

Laughter Hilarious 4 Yes 3

Laughter Funny 2 Yes 3

No No 0 No 1

Smile Hilarious 2 Yes 2

No No 0 No 1

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Averages

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Avg Funniness Humorousness(i.e. rate of subjectjudging the stimulus as funny)

No Text 1.44 0.44

Bully 2.47 0.71

Love 2.03 0.72

ComparisonsRelation P-Value

Fun(NoText) < Fun(Bully) 0.003

Hum(NoText) < Hum(Bully) 0.02

Fun(NoText) < Fun(Love) 0.04

Hum(NoText) < Hum(Love) 0.02

Fun(Bully) > Fun(Love) 0.11

Hum(Bully) < Hum(Love) 0.6

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Correlation betweenFunniness and Surprise

Setting Correlation P-Value

No Text 0.56 0.0001

Bully 0.89 6e-15

Love 0.63 1.5e-05

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3. Discussion

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Limitation of Current Experiment

1. Only three situations: we need a large collection of situations, systematically arranged and related to the specific context (e.g. physical vs. virtual environment)

2. How to perform humor facilitation by fictionalization computationally?Possible resources: MetaphorMagnet, NOC List, Scalextric

(Veale)Next steps:Collection and classification of potentially surprising events occurring in smart environmentsDevelopment of a knowledge base of comic characters and related events/behaviors

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ConclusionHumor facilitation as a specific computational humor task (separated from humor detection and humor generation):

Positive moderation of bi-dimensional humorous responseCombination of surprise detection and humorous reframing by storytellingFirst empirical evidence that fictional ideation can perform humor facilitation of an unexpected (i.e. surprising) event in an interactive situation

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Thank You! A comedian does funny things. A good comedian does things funny.

— Buster Keaton

Additional material: hcii16.valitutti.itEmail:

alessandro.valitutti@gmail.com

July 20, 2016