Charisma Perception from Text and Speech Andrew Rosenberg NLP Group Meeting 11/03/05.

Charisma Perception from Text and Speech

Andrew Rosenberg

NLP Group Meeting

11/03/05

11/03/05 NLP Group Meeting 2

Overview

• Background• Speech Study• Transcript Study• Conclusion & Future Work


Overview

• Background– What is charisma?– Does charismatic speech exist?– Why study charismatic speech?

• Speech Study

• Transcript Study

• Conclusion


Background - What is charisma?

(What do I mean by charisma?)• Not “closed door”, face-to-face charisma. • Rather, political (or religious) charisma

– The ability to attract, and retain followers by virtue of personality as opposed to tradition or laws. (Weber ‘47)

• E.g. Ghandi, Hitler, Che Guevara.

• Charismatic speech: Speech that encourages listeners to perceive the speaker as “charismatic”.


Background - Is there such a thing as charismatic speech?

• Pro: – Potential charismatic leaders must communicate

with would-be followers.– Charismatic leaders have historically had a

particular gift at public speaking• Hitler, MLK Jr., Castro.

• Con:– Charisma as a relationship between leader and

followers.– The mythologizing of a charismatic leader extends

beyond public address.


Background - Why study charismatic speech?

• General scientific interest.

• Feedback system for politicians and academic instructors.

• Identification of potential charismatic leaders

• Automatic generation of “charismatic-like” speech


Overview

• Background

• Speech Study– Questions Addressed– Experiment Design– Analyses of Responses


• Conclusion


Speech Study - Questions

• Do subjects agree about what is charismatic?

• What do subjects mean by charismatic?

• What makes speech charismatic?


Speech Study - Experiment Design

• Subjects: Friends and colleagues, not compensated monetarily

• Interface: Presentation of 45 short speech segments (2-30secs) via a web form

• Dependent variables: 5-point Likert scale ratings of agreement on 26 statements.

• Duration: avg. 1.5 hrs, min 45m, max ~3hrs



• Interface– http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~amaxwell/survey/



• Materials: 45 tokens of American political speech

• Speakers: 9 Candidates for Democratic Party’s nomination for President– Gen. Clark, Gov. Dean, Rep. Edwards, Rep.

Gephardt, Sen. Kerry, Rep. Kucinich, Sen. Lieberman, Amb. Moseley Braun, Rev. Sharpton

• Topics: Postwar Iraq, Healthcare, Bush’s Tax plan, Reason for Running, Content-Neutral


Speech Study - Analysis

• How much do subjects agree?– Using the weighted kappa statistic with

quadratic weighting, mean kappa was 0.213 across all subject responses.

• Do subjects agree differently based on the stimuli?– No, there were no systematic differences

across all tokens


Do subject agree differently on the 26 statements?

• Most consistent statements

• Charisma: 0.224 (8th)

• Least consistent statements

The speaker is accusatory 0.512

The speaker is passionate 0.458

The speaker is intense 0.431

The speaker is angry 0.404

The speaker is enthusiastic 0.362

The speaker is trustworthy 0.037

The speaker is reasonable 0.070

The speaker is believable 0.074

The speaker is desperate 0.076

The speaker is ordinary 0.115


What do subjects mean by “charismatic”?

• Using kappa we determined which pairs of statements were most closely and consistently correlated with the charismatic statement.


The speaker is charming 0.602

The speaker is persuasive 0.561

The speaker is boring -0.513


The speaker is convincing 0.503


Are certain speakers more charismatic than others?

• Yes, there is a significant difference between speakers (p=1.75e-2)

• Most charismatic – Rep. Edwards (3.73)– Rev. Sharpton (3.40)– Gov. Dean (3.32)

• Least charismatic– Sen. Lieberman (2.38)– Rep. Kucinich (2.73)– Rep. Gephardt (2.77)


Does the genre or topic of speech affect judgments of

charisma?• The tokens were taken from debates,

interviews, stump speeches, and a campaign ad– Stump speeches were the most charismatic.

(3.28) – Interviews the least. (2.90)

• Topic does not affect ratings of charisma.


Does recognizing a speaker affect judgments of charisma?• Subjects were asked to identify which, if

any, speakers they recognized at the end of the study.

• Subjects rated recognized speakers (3.28) significantly more charismatic than those they did not (2.99).


What makes speech charismatic?Acoustic/Prosodic and Lexical Properties

Examined• Duration (secs)• Min, max, mean, stdev F0

– Raw and normalized by speaker

• Min, max, mean, stdev intensity

• Speaking rate (syls/sec)• Length (words, syls)• 1st, 2nd, 3rd person pronoun

density• Function to content word

ratio

• Mean syllables/word• Number and ratio of

disfluencies and repeated words

• Mean words per intermediate and intonational phrase

• Number of intonational, intermediate, and internal phrases

• Mean and stdev of normalized F0 and intensity across phrases

• Require manual labeling of phrase boundaries


What makes speech charismatic?Properties showing positive correlation with

charisma • More Content

– Length in secs, words, syllables, and phrases

• Higher and more dynamic raw F0– Min, max, mean, std. dev. of F0 over male speakers

• Greater intensity– Mean intensity

• Higher in a speaker’s pitch range– Mean normalized F0

• Faster speaking rate– Syllables per second


What makes speech charismatic?Properties showing positive correlation with

charisma • Greater variation of F0 and intensity across phrases

– Std. dev. of normalized phrase F0 and intensity

• The use of more first person pronouns– First person pronoun density

• The use of polysyllabic words– Lexical complexity (mean syllables per word)

• Speaking fluidly– Number and ratio of disfluencies negatively correlate

• Repeat yourself– Number and ratio of repeated words


Overview

• Background• Previous Work• Speech Study• Transcript Study

– Questions Addressed– Experiment Design– Analyses of Responses

• Comparisons to Speech results

• Conclusion


Transcript Survey - Questions

• When reading a transcript of speech, do subjects rate charisma consistently?

• What do subjects mean by charisma? – Do they mean the same thing when referring to

text and speech?

• How does what is said influence subject ratings of charisma, compared to how it is said?


Transcript Survey - Experiment Design

• Subjects: 24 paid participants found – http://newyork.craigslist.org – “Talent gigs” section

• Interface: Presentation of 60 short transcripts (words…) via a web form

• Dependent variables: 5-point Likert scale ratings of agreement on 26 statements.

• Duration: avg. 1.5 hrs, min 45m, max ~3hrs

http://newyork.craigslist.org/


Transcript Survey - Design

• Interface:– http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~amaxwell/textsurvey/A/

http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~amaxwell/textsurvey/A/


Transcript Study - Design

• Materials: 60 of 90 tokens of American political speech– The 90 transcripts were the 45 used in the speech

study, and 45 longer paragraphs– Each subject was presented with all 45 short

(mean ~28 words) and a semi-random set of 15 long transcripts (mean ~130 words)

• Speakers: Identical to Speech Study• Topics: Identical to Speech Study



• Examples:– Token 1:

We’re driving seniors out of medicare into HMOs. Every provision that would’ve brought down the cost of prescription drugs, the drug companies were against em all. They all came out.



• Examples:– Token 2.

…and I’d like to begin by, saying that I hope that, this afternoon’s talk will be an opportunity to challenge some underlying assumptions that we have about the world cause that’s why I’m uh running for President.



• Examples– Token 3:

…stabilize iraq because we occupy it. Yet he will not talk about the deficits in the fifty states we already occupy.



• Examples– Token 4:

…by two thousand five and then let their parents on a sliding scale based on income buy into medicaid at a price much below what they’d have to pay in the market.



• Some tokens are rated very similarly whether presented as speech or a transcript.– Example 1 always charismatic– Example 2 always uncharismatic

• Others are rated very differently – Example 3 more charismatic in speech– Example 4 in text


Transcript Study - Analyses

• How much do subjects agree?– Using the weighted kappa statistic with

quadratic weighting, mean kappa was 0.149

• Do subjects agree differently based on different stimuli?– No significant differences across all tokens


Do subject agree differently on the 26 statements?

• Most consistent statements

• Charisma: 0.134 (18th)

• Least consistent statements

The speaker is accusatory 0.280

The speaker is angry 0.263

The speaker’s message is clear 0.206

The speaker is friendly 0.197

The speaker is knowledgeable 0.193

The speaker is spontaneous

0.039

The speaker is ordinary 0.048

The speaker is boring 0.050

The speaker is desperate 0.064




• Using the kappa statistic determined which pairs of statements were most closely correlated with the charismatic statement.

The speaker is charming 0.576


The speaker is persuasive 0.503

The speaker is powerful 0.485

The speaker is convincing 0.483




• Those statements that cooccur with the charismatic are in the speech and transcript study overlap greatly

• From this we conjecture that subjects employ a consistent functional definition of “charismatic” – Namely “charming, enthusiastic,

persuasive, convincing and passionate”


Does the identity of the speaker affect judgments of charisma?

• There is a significant difference between speakers (p=1.67e-10)

• Most Charismatic:– Gen. Clark (3.61)– Sen. Kerry (3.56)– Gov. Dean (3.54)

• Least Charismatic:– Sen. Lieberman (3.03)– Rep. Kucinich (3.12)– Amb. Mosley-Braun (3.23)


Does the genre of a transcript affect judgments of charisma?• Genre demonstrates a significant

influence on charisma (p=9.18e-14)

• Stump (3.34) and debate (3.32) above mean (3.15)

• Interview below mean (2.85)


Does the topic of a transcript affect judgments of charisma?• Topic was significantly influenced

ratings of charisma (p=1.5e-10)– In speech study, topic had no impact.

• Most charismatic topics:– Content-Neutral (3.64), Reason for running

(3.53) mean:3.36

• Least charismatic:– Taxes (3.12), Iraq (3.22), Healthcare (3.28)


What makes a transcript charismatic?

• More Content– Length in words, or syllables

• Use of more function words– Density of function words

• Use of fewer first person pronouns– First person pronoun density is negatively correlated

• Speak fluidly– Number and ratio of disfluencies

• Repeat yourself– Number and ratio of repetitions

• Lexical complexity (syls/wd) doesn’t matter


Overview

• Background

• Previous Work

• Speech Study


• Conclusion– Future Work


Conclusion• Despite not agreeing about what is

“charismatic”, subjects employ a common definition of “charisma”.– “Enthusiasm, passion, charm, persuasion and being

convincing” are consistently used to describe someone is “charismatic”.

• In general, what is said is a dominant force in whether speech is perceived as “charismatic” or not, with how it is said modifying this.

• Acoustic properties broadly reflect enthusiasm and passion


Conclusion - Future Work

• Resynthesis Experiments– By modifying prosody of tokens can we make

Lieberman charismatic? Sharpton uncharismatic?

• Investigating Palestinian Arabic– What are the similarities and differences between

American and Palestinian notions of charisma?– What lexical and acoustic/prosodic properties are

displayed by charismatic Palestinian speech?

Charisma Perception from Text and Speech Andrew Rosenberg NLP Group Meeting 11/03/05.

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