Mind at Play II: Cognitive Dissonance (Loftus and Loftus)

Mind at Play II: Cognitive Dissonance(Loftus and Loftus) 3 Shuen-shing Lee*Unless otherwise specified, the ideas and concepts in this ppt are either quoted or cited from Loftus and Loftus’Mind at Play

Mind at Play IICognitive Dissonance • 2 definitions: (1) “an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously”; (2) a mental strategy to fend off the above discomfort. [Ref. “Sour Grapes.” The Fox and the Grapes. Also see Wikipedia, “Cognitive Dissonance.”] [Ex. Iphones vs. pirate copies ] • An issue: Games may be more reinforcing, not less, if you have to pay for them? If true, enters the cognitive dissonance[Note: you need a reason to justify the money spent.] The experiment:A tedious, boring task to be done. One group, after getting the task done, was offered $20 to lie to others that the task was fun. The other group was offered $1 to do the same things. • The result: the $1 group claimed to like the tedious task much better than did the $20 group.[Note: The less reinforcement you get, the more justification you need, and vice versa.]

Mind at Play IICognitive Dissonance • The theory: When a person performs acts that are in conflict with one another, “cognitive dissonance” [a mental strategy] will arise in his mind to reduce the conflict. In the forementioned experiment, the conflict was between (1) the people’s knowledge that they were performing a boring task and (2) their knowledge that they had told someone else that the task was fun. The $20 group, which considered the job much more boring, had adequate justification—they were hired guns, paid to lie. The $1 group didn’t have this handy justification. By believing that the task was more interesting, they created a justification for the positive report that they made about it. • Ref. “Sour Grapes.” The Fox and the Grapes. Also see Wikipedia, “Cognitive Dissonance.” CD (a) as a kind of uncomfortable feeling and (2) as a strategy to fend off the discomfort.

Mind at Play IICognitive Dissonance • Extrinsic reinforcement:The $20 group got sufficient extrinsic reinforcement to justify their lying. • Intrinsic reinforcement:The $1 dollar group got insufficient extrinsic reinforcement to justify their lying. Then, the intrinsic reinforcement had to be generated. The subjects had to decide that the task was more intrinsically fulfilling.

Mind at Play IIIRegret and Alternative Worlds • One case: Two passengers, Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones, have missed their respective flight "in equal difficulty," but Smith is late for two minutes while Jones late for half an hour. Smith usually experiences worse regret, since the discrepancy between his reality (two minutes late) and the alternate world (catching up the flight) is much less. • The theory: Psychologists propose that the less the difference between one's reality and its "alternate world," the more regret one gets.

Mind at Play IIIRegret and Alternative Worlds • The case of games: In the gaming process, a wrong decision that ends the game (the reality) usually makes the player regret not having advanced to the next level or cracked the game (the alternate). When tuning the difficulty for a level of a game, designers attempt to minimize the distance between advancement and failure, thus maximizing the degree of regret in the player's response, or, in other words, augmenting the possibility of the player's inserting more quarters or reloading the previously saved game to assuage his regret.

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ALICE: Text to Text, Text to Speech • The MechanismSpeech → (Text → Text ) → SpeechSpeech ← (Text ← Text ) ← Speech • Our focus: Text-to-Text (the core concept of a bot), devoid of the speech-to-speech engineering. Note: A TTT bot can be rendered into a TTS bot in the Pandorabots environment.

AIML-ALICE 1 • Apply for a pandorabot account • Log in • “Create a Pandorabot”--Give it a name--Choose a brain (e.g., A.L.I.C.E, version 2003)--Press the “Create Pandorabot” • Publish the bot • Click the bot’s address to have it tested on the Internet.

AIML-ALICE 2 • “Custom HTML” (use this function to set up font, color, text, and more)--Use the HTML tags readily available in the description section (click the link “description” in the introduction).--Relocate “OUTPUT” to the place after “input”--Give the file a name and submit it.--To modify the file, click “Custom HTML.” Your html file will be on the list. Click it. After modification is done, save the file and press “submit changes.”

AIML-ALICE 3 • “Properties”--change properties or add new ones--properties form (+ properties; such as interest: tennis) • Press “submit changes” • REPUBLISH the bot

AIML-Blank 1 • “Create a Pandorabot”--Give it a name--Choose the option, “no initial content”--Press the “Create Pandorabot” • Publish the bot • Do a comparison between the ALICE bot (ex., 102alice) and the BLANK bot (ex., 102blank) in light of “AIML” section

AIML-Blank 2 • Do not try “properties” (before building up more AIML file). • Learn to use “Pandorawriter.”--A sample writing below. Convert it and download it to your local machine. Later, upload it to the “AIML” page.*What is your name**Call me Al*How old are you**18*Tell me more about yourself**Why should I?*You need a job from me**Oh ya • NOTES: 1. Pandorawriter provides only one-to-one mode. Let’s learn a little bit of AIML tags to empower our bots.2. As long as there’s an asterisk in superscript after the bot’s name, it means the bot needs a “republish.”

AIML-Blank 3 • Open up one of your files in the “AIML” page and check. • Use the space in the file and add more categories.--one-to-one mode--one-to-many (see next ppt page)--one-to-many-many--many-to-one v1 (random)--many-to-one v2 (the ultimate)--many-to-one v3 (</srai>)--many-to-many (</srai> + random)--many-to-many-many? • NOTES: For samples, go to the instructor’s website: downloads/hyper-aiml-samples.doc

AIML-Blank 4 • One-to-many: A sample<category> <pattern> What do you like to eat </pattern> <template> <random> <i>spaghetti</i> <i>noodle</i> </random> </template></category>

Mind at Play II: Cognitive Dissonance (Loftus and Loftus)