[Aleader-dev] Re: direction

[William L. Jarrold]

On Thu, 7 Aug 2003, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:

> [In this email, I have responded to only some of your points
> which seem urgent.  I will respond to the remaining points later.
>
> One more note: For easy of discussion I assume "emotion" =
> "affective state".]

That is fine for email and agreements between you and I, but prolly
(prolly = my silly shorthand for "probably".  Some American's with
regional accents might pronounce "probably" as "prolly")
not good for getting published.  Much ink has been spilled on what
is an emotion.  We need to have a good definition.  Part of making
a good definition is to say what are definition is NOT.  The following
blurb shows how Ortony et al have defined emotion.  This is an excerpt
from my master's thesis (well, technically it is from my prospectus) that
was commented out from the final version...

%The first step in this process is defining emotions as affectively
%valenced construals of situations.  However, they define emotion as
%distinct subset of affect. (actually this is not from [OCC] but rather
%from [Ortony, Clore and Foss 1987a]) The best examples of emotions are
%those that a) refer to internal, mental conditions as opposed to
%external or physical ones, b) are clear cases of states (I'm not exactly
%sure what they mean by this), c) and have affect as opposed to behavior
%or cognition as predominant focus.  As these constraints are relaxed,
%one gets non-emotions or poorer examples of emotions.  Though the
%

...As I recall OCC has a nice blurb on how "abandoned" does not refer to
an emotion.  Our paper should say that although "abandoned" does not refer
to an Ortony like emotion but it does refer to an affective state.

>

> On Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 08:43:46PM -0500, William L. Jarrold wrote:
> > > > o I did not really get passed a thorough checkout of "celebrate
> > > > presence", i.e. Item #31.  However, I did a random leap and ended up
> > > > looking at "You think I'm afraid of you big fuck?" from Goodwill
> > > > Hunting.  This appeared to be classified as admiration (there was a box
> > > > checked next to "[+] admires [0].").
> > >
> > > Perhaps it seems strange to classify this situation as "admires"?
> > > "Admires" is actually a _general_ category.
> > >
> > > This situation also classifies to the _specific_ category
> > > "haughty / arrogant" (which is a sub-type of admires).
> >
> > I don't see haughty as being a sub-case of admires, unless admires
> > includes self-admiration?
>
> Yes, it does.
>
> To be precise, the appraisal category is:
>
>   "I am _expecting_ you to admire me."
>   (I=Will, you=Chuckie, spoken in a pushy tone of voice)
>

OCC states that admiration, by definition, involves one person to feel
good about something that another has/does.  The emoter is focusing on
the praiseworthiness of another's role in some situation.  The emoter
finds that the admired person is upholding some kind of standard.  I find
this to be a good coherent definition of the emotion (and the affective
state) referred to by the word "admiration".

As you state, the "You think I'm afraid of you big fuck" clip is about
Will expecting Chuckie to admire him.  I agree with that statement well
enough for current purposes.  However, I will add that the affective
state depicted is *related to* admiration but it does not fit the OCC
definition of admiration.  Will is *expecting* Chuckie to admire him.
Will is *not* focusing on the praiseworthiness of Chuckie's comportment
in this situation.  Expectations fit in via standards based emotions such
as admiration and reproach.  E.g. people are expected to hold up the
standard of "exhibit good manners" or "don't lie" or "don't kill people."
Back to the example at hand, Will is expecting Chuckie to admire him.
Will is sitting there like, "come on you fuck, admire me!" and Chuckie is
not complying with this expectation.  In fact, I think Will is feeling the
opposite of admiration.  He is feeling reproach in this situation.  Will
expects his friends to uphold the standard of admiring those who deserve
to be admired.  And Will believes that he is deserving of admiration.
Chuckie is "just sitting there".  So, Will perceives Chuckie's role
as violating the standard/expectation of "Admire those who deserve to be."
According to OCC, if someone focuses thought on a another's
blameworthiness with respect to a given standard/expectation and these
thoughts are "above threshold" (kind of a handwave for present purposes)
THEN reproach is felt.

Hmm, let me do a "parity check" here to make sure we are on sort of in
sync....  The original line from the film is "You think I'm afraid of you
big fuck." [a] Does "you" refer to Chuckie or Will?  Joshua, you
basically stated that subtext of [a] was "I (Will) am _expecting_
you(Chuckie) to admire me."  Correct?

Well, regardless, I stand by the above paragraphs.

Hmm, I used the word "parity check".  Not sure if you have had the right
courses/self study to know what I am referring.  What kinds of classes did
you take at CMU?  Any significant self-study beyond that?...Now that I
think of it, what computer languages do you know?

> > Film clips are a nice way to illustrate an emotion concept by
> > way of several examples....Btw, it would help if your writings made the
> > following clear:
> >
> > o Any given character in a given film clip may be depicting
> > several different emotions at once.
> >
> > o A set of characters that are simultaneously present in a film clip
> > need not be depicting identical emotions.
> >
> > o The overall emotional tone of depicted by a film clip is something that
> > is distinct from what each of the individual characters in a film is
> > depicting.
>
> I agree.  I don't have a list like that because I doubted whether
> I could imagine all the possible funny cases.  Maybe I should
> just include your list and keep expanding it as I learn more.

I'm not sure what you mean by "funny cases".  I don't think there are
another other elements to be added to the above 3 element list.

>
> Which reminds me ... I have tried to explain this next point
> a few times.  Tell me if you understand (or if you already
> understood previously):

Thanks for asking.  Questions like this seem to be causing me to feel
hopeful optimism about our working together.  (-:

So, to answer your question about your next point.  I sort of understood
it but not entirely.  And I understand it slightly better having read
the paragraph below.  However, I still have some lack of understanding.
See my questions below.

>
> To achieve consistency, the Aleader appraisal instructs the
> analyst to follow some rules which narrow down on an immediate
> emotion.  These rules are designed to turn random film into
> a repeatable, narrow, single emotion sequence, independent
> of the analyst.  Obviously film is more than a single emotion
> sequence, but film is hard to analyze without some simplification.

This helps.  If you haven't already, put the above paragraph in your
writings near the beginning.  However, you will need more.  There are
three big  open issues here.  There is:

Issue 1: "What rules govern cognitive appraisal?"  (I.e. for a given agent
how can we predict the affective states experienced for a given set of
perceptions).

Issue 2: "What rules goven affective mindreading a.k.a. cognitive
empathy?"

Issue 3: "Are there answers to issues 1 and 2 that can be consciously or
deliberately used by people for the purposes of personal growth."

Please mention these issues your (our?) writings.  You (me too!)
hypothesize that pursuing issue 3 is worth trying.  Nonetheless, it could
turn out that the answers to Issues 1 and 2 are so complex, so
non-intuitive that there's not much personal growth that can be obtained.

Please mention something like the above (copy it in is fine with me for
present purposes) to the relevant part of your (our) writings.

>
> > My intuition tells me that you are into both the researchy and the
> > personal growth aspects of this CD.  However, my intuition also tells
> > me that you have not yet developed separate strategies for these two
> > aspects.
>
> Correct.

Great.  We have at least some resonance then.  Bill's
hopefullness/optimism potential just went up another notch.

>
> > One thing that would make it *much* easier to test gobs of subjects would
> > be to have them simply point there browser at a website.  The CD thing can
> > be a pain....If you can do the website thing then you can do something
> > like Open Mind.  How hard would it be to do your thing via a website
> > rather than a linux isa cd?
>
> My main worry with putting the whole thing on a web site is that
> I'll attract a cease & desist court-order for broadcasting
> copywrited material (the films).

Well, you don't *have* to use films that have big expensive lawyers
behind them, right?  I mean you can shoot your own.  You can find films
that actually *want* more distribution.  There are plenty of well made
films that are very emotionally evocative.  Student films are a good
example.

>
> It doesn't matter that I am legally protected by "fair use for
> non-profit education".  I simply can't afford to fight a court
> case, even if my actions are supported by the law.
>
> I believe that asking film studios for permission is also perilous.
>

Well, given how letigious US (espec California) attorney's are I am not
surprised.

> (Can you imagine my state of mind before I figured out how to make
> a bootable CD?  I had this cool project, but it was impossible to
> show to anyone!)

Are you saying that distribution via CD is legal but on the web is
illegal?  (If so I would feel at least slightly surprised if that were
true).

>
> > It would probably be most interesting to compare
> > three different categorization schemes.  Maybe yours, plus Ortony's
> > plus some scheme that should show now sig difference.
>
> Oh, OK.  Cool.
>
> I wonder about the procedual methodology.

Yep, me too.  I'd like to see your answers to the above
before pushing forward on that.

>
> I speculate that Aleader has a larger vocabulary of emotions
> (about 50) than most other schemes.  Roseman96 identifies
> just 17 emotions.  I believe OCC proposes 22 emotions.
>
> How should we deal with that?  Would we carefully select
> examples which are classifiable in any of the three schemes?

Maybe something like that.

We might just pick one theory and work with that for the time being.

We might do a first study in which we ask people to say which scenes go
with which emotions/affective states.

But, we need to see what else has been done in this neck of the research
woods.

Also need to find out how many subjects we can get.  Likewise, how many
items can be in the study.

I need to talk to my advisor.

I need to read the research proposal you sent me.

>
> > We could also consider a conference presentation.  One can often get
> > both a conference and a paper out of the same piece of research -- there
> > are different aspects, different angles on a given project....There is
> > also the cynical notion of "the publicon".  The smallest publishable
> > unit.  People with physics backgrounds like to mention such things.
>
> Yah!

A nice thing about a conference is that the bar for participation can be
lower.  You can sometimes get by with just a proposal -- and get good
feedback on how to improve it.  Or you can get by with more preliminary
data from a recently executed proposal.

>
> On the other hand, I already did a study here in India last year
> with about 25 students.  The only problem was that I didn't measure
> anything interesting.  I guess the trick is to find a middle
> ground between too big and too small.

Definitely.

>
> The other point is that, as an academic outsider, I suspect I
> will learn a lot from the publication process.  I bet my whole
> presentation will improve tremendously just by immersing myself
> in academic procedures and protocol.

Yes.  Btw, my advisor said that reviewers anonomously review stuff.  Thus,
to the extent that anonymity really can be preserved, it should not matter
that you are not part of the academic regime.

>
> > Yeah, sure.  I'm a little tentative bc I feel like brainstorming more,
> > talking to my advisor, exploring other ideas, but my intuition tells
> > me that there isa at least a 55 % chance that we will not come
> > up with a better idea working with the same level of intensity over the
> > next 2 weeks.
>
> Part of the reason I'm pushing for a plan is that I have an
> appointment with a local psychology professor on Aug 11 (evening).
> I'll write up a draft research proposal.  Hopefully you will have
> time to review it once prior to the meeting.

Good.  I'll tryta peek at it.  But probably won't be able to respond until
tommorrow Sunday the 10th.

>
> > Getting human subjects is a bitch.  You have to go through all these
> > committees proving that the subjects won't be harmed.  I don't know
> > how this works in places like India.
>
> India is easy.  If the basic research proposal is acceptable
> then I can probably get human subjects with a handshake.
>
> > If one wants to publish in Cognition
> > and Emotion what kinds of human subjects review must one complete?
> > Well, I have access to Diane (my dissertation advisor) who is well
> > ensconsced in the academic cliques that do all this stuff.
>
> Hrm, will a "human subjects review" also apply to any
> Indian subjects?

Ask the professor with whom you meet.

Another issue is can we use data in an anglo american journal if it was
not obtained via anglo american human subjects review.

By the way, these issues fall under "scientific research ethics." So, if
you intelligently use that phrase in your language (e.g. with your
professor) you will seem more like an insider, less like some whacko that
the prof needs to be worried about.

>
> > Cool.  How do I learn the model.  Sorry, I'm afraid I'm asking an
> > extremely obvious question.  My life as an psychology intern -- just
> > starting this week -- can be very stressful, so I might forget stuff.
>
> + Read my comments on Roseman96.  I emailed them yesterday.  If you
> didn't receive them then let me know.  I'll re-send.

Eek.  I have not read this yet.  I believe I saw it in my mailbox.

>
> + Finish the tutorial.  You don't have to go through _every_
> situation.  Just go through enough examples that you "get a feel"
> for the definition of each of the 10 easy emotion categories.

Okay.

>
> + After that, I'm not sure what to suggest.  Perhaps you can try
> reading the reference manual (the doc you printed out and looked
> at each page for 2 seconds).

Great.  Maybe I can get up to 20 seconds!!!  Actually, I think I have
since given it a closer read.  Not sure.  I'm happy enough with our
current modus operandi.  The key is to focus on deliverable writings --
proposals, drafts.  Many important nuggets are in the above email.

>
> Make sure to look at the latest version though.  I made some edits
> recently.  It is somewhat shorter now.  Here's the new url:
>
>   http://savannah.nongnu.org/download/aleader/htdocs/aleader-ref.pdf

Oh, okay.  I will send an email to myself and cc you with this to-do item
in it.  My email stack (with 1100 msgs) is a good workflow tracker for me.

Bill

>
> --
> .. Sensual .. Perceptual .. Cognitive .. Emotional .. Oh My!
>