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April 1-2, 2008
Aberdeen, Scotland

Symposium: Persuasive Technology

In conjunction with the AISB 2008 Convention
Communication, Interaction and Social Intelligence (AISB mirror site)

Judith Masthoff
Department of Computing Science
University of Aberdeen
Aberdeen AB24 3UE, UK
j.masthoff(AT)abdn.ac.uk
www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/~jmasthof/

Chris Reed
Department of Applied Computing
University of Dundee
Dundee DD1 4HN, UK
chris(AT)computing.dundee.ac.uk
www.computing.dundee.ac.uk/staff/creed/

Floriana Grasso
Department of Computer Science
University of Liverpool
Liverpool L69 3BF, UK
floriana(AT)csc.liv.ac.uk
www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~floriana/

Key Dates

• Paper submission: January 28, 2008 (Extended)
• Notification: February 22, 2008
• Final Copy Due: March 10, 2008
• Symposium dates: April 1-2, 2008 		Can a web site persuade you to be politically active? Can a mobile phone motivate you to exercise? Does instant feedback on petrol use change how people drive? Do online rating systems inspire people to behave better online? This symposium will focus on how digital technology can motivate and influence people (or agents). It will bring together researchers, designers, and developers interested in computers designed to change attitudes and behaviors in positive ways.

Call for papers    Topics of Interest    Schedule    Programme Committee

Call for papers

In a persuasive communication, a source tries to influence a receiver’s attitudes or behaviours through the use of messages. Each of these three components (the source, the receiver, and the messages) affects the effectiveness of persuasion. In addition, the type of communication (the way the message is delivered) can impact a message’s effectiveness. This symposium will bring together researchers working on all these aspects of persuasion, from persuasive argumentation to persuasive user interfaces.

Persuasive technology has a great practical potential, for instance to improve health (encouraging a reduction in alcohol intake, smoking cessation, an increase in exercise, more healthy eating, and adherence to medical treatment) and to move towards sustainable living (encouraging a reduction in energy consumption, recycling, and use of public transport). There is a growing interest within the research community into persuasive technology, as shown by the emergence of the new Persuasive conference series (in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, 2006; Stanford, US, 2007; Oulu, Finland, 2008), as well as the successful series of workshops on Computational Models of Natural Argument (an area overlapping with persuasion).

The symposium will take place on two consecutive days. In addition to presentation by participants, there will be discussions in smaller groups on topics determined beforehand. We are also hoping to have one or two invited speakers.

Topics of interest

Submissions are invited on all aspects of Persuasive Technology. This includes, but is not limited to:
  • Persuasive argumentation
    • Generating persuasive arguments (identifying discourse goals, choosing argument structure, content selection)
    • Ontologies for persuasion
    • Persuasive discourse processing: understanding what users say in terms of argumentation schemes
    • Computational models of argumentation
    • Rhetoric and affect: the role of emotions, personalities, etc. in models of argumentation.
    • Enhancing receiver involvement
  • User modeling
    • Modeling receiver involvement
    • Modeling receiver position
    • Modeling personality and affective state for persuasion
    • Effect of cultural differences on persuasion
  • Persuasive User Interfaces
    • Use of (multiple) Embodied Conversational Agents for persuasion
    • Communication settings (e.g. direct versus indirect communication)
    • Timing of persuasive messages/ when to interrupt the user
    • Effective presentation of arguments
    • Online dispute resolution
    • Mobile persuasion, persuasive images, persuasive video, persuasive games
  • Peripheral routes of persuasion
    • Humor in persuasion
    • Enhancing source credibility
      • Building trust using natural language
      • Models of on-line trust/credibility
      • Effects of Source appearance, source similarity
  • Alternative ways of persuasion
    • Using the influence of peers to persuade
    • Persuasion through incentives and punishment
  • Evaluation methods for persuasive technology
  • Ethics of persuasive technology
  • Applications of persuasive technology, like in healthcare, education, e-commerce, politics

Submissions

Please submit your papers in PDF format via email to all three symposium organisors. We invite both long papers of up to 6 pages on substantial research results, and short papers of up to 2 pages on more polemic, work-in-progress, burning issue or system description topics. Accepted papers will be published in the AISB proceedings, with an ISBN number. Authors of papers must sign a non-exclusive copyright declaration which gives AISB the right to publish the paper, but does not prevent the author from also publishing it in other venues after. We are investigating the possiblity of publishing the best papers in a special issue of a journal. Paper formatting instructions are provided on the AISB08 website. Paper submission has now closed. The length of accepted long papers has been increased to 8 pages, and of short papers to 4.

Awards and Scholarships

At AISB08 there will be a "Best Student Paper" award, with a £250 prize, as well as student scholarships. More information can be found on the main AISB08 pages.

Schedule

Detailed Schedule. In addition to the presentation of accepted long and short papers, there will be a panel on the Ethics of Persuasive Systems, an invited speaker (Ehud Reiter) and discussion sessions.

Accepted long papers

  • A Dominance Model for the Calculation of Decoy Products in Recommendation Environments
    by A. Felfernig, B. Gula, G. Leitner, M. Maier, R. Melcher, S. Schippel, E. C. Teppan
  • Emotional And Non Emotional Persuasion Strength
    by Irene Mazzotta, Enzo Silvestri and Fiorella de Rosis
  • Persuasive gaze in political discourse
    by Isabella Poggi and Laura Vincze
  • Social and Persuasive Argumentation over Organized Actions
    by Maxime Morge
  • Using digital images to persuade
    by Hien Nguyen and Judith Masthoff
  • When the experiment is over: Deploying an incentive system to all the users
    by Rosta Farzan, Joan M. DiMicco, David R.Millen, Beth Brownholtz, Werner Geyer, Casey Dugan
  • The persuasive effects of positive and negative social feedback from an embodied agent on energy conservation behavior
    by Cees Midden and Jaap Ham

Accepted short papers

  • Persuasive technology for shaping social beliefs in rural women: Development of group based health information kiosk
    by Vikram Param
  • Persuasion Technology Through Mechanical Sophistry
    by Micah Clark and Selmer Bringsjord
  • Encouraging Community Spirit with Situated Displays
    by Nick Taylor, Mark Rouncefield, Keith Cheverst and Shahram Izadi
  • MAgtALO: An Agent-Based System for Persuasive Online Interaction
    by Simon Wells and Chris Reed

Programme Committee

Fiorella de Rosis, University of Bari, Italy
Nancy Green, University of North Carolina Greensboro, US
Helmut Horacek, University of the Saarland, Saarbrücken, Germany
Doug Walton, University of Winnipeg, Canada
Cees Midden, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands
Peter de Vries, Twente University, Netherlands
Hien Nguyen, University of Aberdeen, UK
Susan Ferebee, University of Phoenix, US
Timothy Bickmore, Northeastern University, US
Jim Lyttle, Penn State Great Valley, US
Ingrid Zukerman, Monash University, Australia
Fabio Paglieri, ISTC-CNR, Rome, Italy
Marco Guerini, ITC-IRST, Povo-Trento, Italy
Guiseppe Carenini, University of British Colombia, Canada
Oliviero Stock, ITC-IRST, Italy
Katie Atkinson, University of Liverpool, UK