Showing papers on "Surprise published in 2008"

Learning to identify emotions in text

Abstract: This paper describes experiments concerned with the automatic analysis of emotions in text. We describe the construction of a large data set annotated for six basic emotions: ANGER, DISGUST, FEAR, JOY, SADNESS and SURPRISE, and we propose and evaluate several knowledge-based and corpusbased methods for the automatic identification of these emotions in text.

Should You Invest in the Long Tail

Abstract: Are blockbusters losing their power now that online retailing can offer a little something for every taste? The answer may surprise you.

Classification as Culture: Types and Trajectories of Music Genres

Abstract: Questions of symbolic classification have been central to sociology since its earliest days, given the relevance of distinctions for both affiliation and conflict. Music and its genres are no exception, organizing people and songs within a system of symbolic classification. Numerous studies chronicle the history of specific genres of music, but none document recurrent processes of development and change across musics. In this article, we analyze 60 musics in the United States, delineating between 12 social, organizational, and symbolic attributes. We find four distinct genre types—Avant-garde, Scene-based, Industry-based, and Traditionalist. We also find that these genre types combine to form three distinct trajectories. Two-thirds originate in an Avant-garde genre, and the rest originate as a scene or, to our surprise, in an Industry-based genre. We conclude by discussing a number of questions raised by our findings, including the implications for understanding symbolic classification in fields other tha...

Social Learning and Peer Effects in Consumption: Evidence from Movie Sales

Abstract: Using box-office data for all movies released between 1982 and 2000, I test the implications of a simple model of social learning in which the consumption decisions of individuals depend on information they receive from their peers. The model predicts different box office sales dynamics depending on whether opening weekend demand is higher or lower than expected. I use a unique feature of the movie industry to identify ex-ante demand expectations: the number of screens dedicated to a movie in its opening weekend reflects the sales expectations held by profit-maximizing theater owners. Several pieces of evidence are consistent with social learning. First, sales of movies with positive surprise and negative surprise in opening weekend demand diverge over time. If a movie has better than expected appeal and therefore experiences larger than expected sales in week 1, consumers in week 2 update upward their expectations of quality, further increasing week 2 sales. Second, this divergence is small for movies for which consumers have strong priors and large for movies for which consumers have weak priors. Third, the effect of a surprise is stronger for audiences with large social networks. Finally, consumers do not respond to surprises in first week sales that are orthogonal to movie quality, like weather shocks. Overall, social learning appears to be an important determinant of sales in the movie industry, accounting for 38% of sales for the typical movie with positive surprise. This implies the existence of a large "social multiplier'' such that the elasticity of aggregate demand to movie quality is larger than the elasticity of individual demand to movie quality.

Trial-by-trial fluctuations in the event-related electroencephalogram reflect dynamic changes in the degree of surprise.

Abstract: The P300 component of the human event-related brain potential has often been linked to the processing of rare, surprising events. However, the formal computational processes underlying the generation of the P300 are not well known. Here, we formulate a simple model of trial-by-trial learning of stimulus probabilities based on Information Theory. Specifically, we modeled the surprise associated with the occurrence of a visual stimulus to provide a formal quantification of the "subjective probability" associated with an event. Subjects performed a choice reaction time task, while we recorded their brain responses using electroencephalography (EEG). In each of 12 blocks, the probabilities of stimulus occurrence were changed, thereby creating sequences of trials with low, medium, and high predictability. Trial-by-trial variations in the P300 component were best explained by a model of stimulus-bound surprise. This model accounted for the data better than a categorical model that parametrically encoded the stimulus identity, or an alternative model of surprise based on the Kullback-Leibler divergence. The present data demonstrate that trial-by-trial changes in P300 can be explained by predictions made by an ideal observer keeping track of the probabilities of possible events. This provides evidence for theories proposing a direct link between the P300 component and the processing of surprising events. Furthermore, this study demonstrates how model-based analyses can be used to explain significant proportions of the trial-by-trial changes in human event-related EEG responses.

Surprise as a design strategy

Abstract: Imagine yourself queuing for the cashier’s desk in a supermarket. Naturally, you have picked the wrong line, the one that does not seem to move at all. Soon, you get tired of waiting. Now, how would you feel if the cashier suddenly started to sing? Many of us would be surprised and, regardless of the cashier’s singing abilities, feel amused. The preceding story is an example of how a surprise can transform something very normal, and maybe even boring, into a more pleasant experience. Analogously, a surprise in a product can overcome the habituation effect that is due to the fact that people encounter many similar products everyday. Colin Martindale describes this effect as ‘the gradual loss of interest in repeated stimuli’.¹ A surprise reaction to a product can be beneficial to both a designer and a user. The designer benefits from a surprise reaction because it can capture attention to the product, leading to increased product recall and recognition, and increased word-ofmouth.² Or, as Jennifer Hudson puts it, the surprise element “elevates a piece beyond the banal”.³ A surprise reaction has its origin in encountering an unexpected event. The product user benefits from the surprise, because it makes the product more interesting to interact with. In addition, it requires updating, extending or revising the knowledge the expectation was based on. This implies that a user can learn somethingnew about a product or product aspect. Designers already use various strategies to design surprises in their products. Making use of contrast, mixing design styles or functions, using new materials or new shapes, and using humor are just a few of these. The lamp ‘Porca Miseria!’ designed by Ingo Maurer that is shown in the left part of Figure 1 consists of broken pieces of expensive porcelain tableware, making it a lamp with a unique shape. The idea that another product had to be destroyed to make this lamp may inflict feelings of 3 puzzlement and amusement on someone who sees this lamp. The perfume ‘Flowerbomb’ (right part of Figure 1) designed by fashion designers Victor & Rolf is another example. The bottle is shaped like a hand grenade and it holds a sweet smelling, soft pink liquid. By combining conflicting elements in their perfume bottle, Victor & Rolf have succeeded in creating a perfume that attracts attention amidst the dozens of perfumes that line the walls of perfumeries.

Could Early Warning Systems Have Helped To Predict the Sub-Prime Crisis?:

Abstract: One of the features of the sub-prime crisis, that began in August 2007, was its unexpected nature It came as a surprise not only to most financial market participants but also in some degree to th

Free will is un-natural.

Abstract: The history of social psychology, and especially its subfield of social cognition, is replete with surprising findings of complex judgmental and behavioral phenomena that operate outside of conscious awareness and even intention (Wegner & Bargh, 1998). Yet the surprising nature of these findings comes no longer from their relative infrequency, for they have become all too commonplace in the research literature. Instead, the surprise comes from the continuing overarching assumption of the field regarding the primacy of conscious will. Based most likely on our (i.e., research psychologists’) own subjective experience as human beings, the early process models of each new phenomenon tend to start with the assumption of a major role played by conscious choice and decisions, intention and awareness, in producing the phenomenon in question. Then further findings start coming in showing that, “surprisingly,” much of the phenomenon can be explained without need of stages or steps involving conscious intention or awareness. In the rest of the natural sciences, especially evolutionary biology and neuroscience, the assumption of conscious primacy is not nearly as prevalent as it is in psychology. Thus one goal for the present chapter is to help bring psychology more in line with the rest of the natural sciences, in which complex and highly intelligent design in living things is not assumed to be driven by conscious, intentional processes on the part of the plant or animal, but instead by “blind” natural selection processes (see Dawkins, 1976; Dennett, 1995). As Dennett (1991, p. 251) put it, “in biology, we have learned to resist the temptation to explain design in organisms by positing a single great Intelligence that does all

A Use of Flashback and Foreshadowing for Surprise Arousal in Narrative Using a Plan-Based Approach

Abstract: This paper describes work currently in progress to develop a computational method for generating flashback and foreshadowing, specifically targeted at the evocation of surprise in the reader's mind. Flashback provides a backstory to explain what caused the surprise outcome. Foreshadowing provides an implicit hint about the surprise. Our study focuses on surprise as a cognitive response rather than as an emotional response. The reader's story construction process is simulated by a plan-based reader model that checks unexpectedness and postdictability of the surprise.

Further Reflections on Reading Other Minds

Abstract: The articles in this special collection give us an opportunity to further reflect on a central concern for any discipline dedicated to the study of human action, namely, the role that introspection plays in giving us insights into what people think, feel, and want. The starting point of this discussion is the observation that members of a number of Pacific societies have been said to claim-or to imply through their behavior-that it is impossible to know what goes on in another person's mind. This claim, called the "doctrine of the opacity of other minds" by the editors (hereafter "opacity doctrine"), is often extended to the self, as when native consultants refuse to provide motivations for their own actions or resist any kind of intentional reading of what they have just done. In treating this type of attitude as a puzzle that needs our empirical and theoretical attention, the authors in this collection, like those of us who were dealing with it some twenty plus years ago, are making a set of analytical choices based on assumptions that should be re-examined. In the following comments I review some potential problems that emerge in the arguments presented in this collection and also suggest some ways of integrating philosophical and anthropological perspectives that could help develop more precise research tools and hypotheses about the opacity doctrine. Levels of Argumentation A careful reading of the articles in this collection shows that the opacity doctrine has been dealt with on two main levels, observational and explanatory, each of which relies on a different order of generalizations and implies different kinds of analytical categories and types of argumentation. The first level-which we might call "observational"-draws from fieldwork situations in which ethnographers try to get their consultants, field assistants, hosts, and friends to tell them about other members' actions, motivations, explanations, and emotions. These attempts, as we know from the ethnographic literature, which include the articles in this collection, are sometimes met with surprise, suspicion, or flat rejection, as in "How would I know?" or "Why should I know?" Such responses are subsequently interpreted as consistent with a particular "local" theory of interpretation, to be distinguished from the ethnographer's. This move transforms the earlier "observational" level into a first stage "explanatory" level. With the confidence that comes with labeling, ethnographers could begin to search for more evidence to support their hypothesis about the local theory. At this point ethnographers also face the question of whether they themselves are creating the problem, and the theory, by asking certain kinds of questions (Briggs 1984). Could it be that a different way of asking about introspection would bring about a different kind of answer? This line of inquiry, as far as I know, has never been fully developed, even though the next step could be seen in part as a way of addressing this issue. Armed with the hypothesis that the natives have a way of thinking about what we can know about others that is different from what is usually assumed in western theories of meaning, ethnographers are able to search for naturally occurring situations in which the same reluctance to read other minds might manifest itself spontaneously, that is, without any outsider's prompting. One important source of evidence for this line of investigation is provided by language socialization studies, as shown by Bambi Schiefflin in this volume and elsewhere (Schieffelin 1990:72-3). The fact that Bosavi adults do not try to guess what an infant is trying to say-Bosavi, like Samoans (Ochs 1982), do not "expand" children's elliptical utterances-shows that the opacity doctrine works across a number of activities and contexts. Another opportunity to look for further evidence of the local theory is presented through inter-cultural contact situations and the introduction of new activities that typically accompany contact. …

Public Management: A Three-Dimensional Approach

Abstract: Managing in the public sector entails an understanding of the interaction between three distinct dimensions, administrative structures and processes, organizations and their cultures, and the skills and values of individual managers. Public managers must produce results that citizens and their representatives expect from their government while balancing these concerns within a constitutional scheme of governance. In "Public Management", authors Carolyn J. Hill and Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. show that constructing critical analyses and persuasive arguments is the principal tool for effectively managing in three dimensions. Students learn how to analyze and explain managerial strategies and decisions, critically assessing real world case studies and building their own arguments. Four unique features further the book's approach and reinforce practical learning: Rule of Law boxes showcase how public managers are affected by statutes, regulations, and court decisions; Concepts in Action boxes show how sense-making, deliberation and decision making are common features in everday news stories, opinion pieces, and government reports; How the World Works boxes aptly illustrate how human nature creates conundrums, irony, and surprise in the practice of public management a reminder that theory cannot fully explain the variety and complexity of human and organizational behavior; and, Analysis and Argument sections at the end of every chapter guide students in case analysis and help them build the elements of an argument (Claim, Reason, Evidence, Warrant, Acknowledgment and Response). Rich with vivid, ripped-from-the-headlines examples of managerial situations as well as noteworthy scholarship, "Public Management" underlines the challenges and art of balancing structure, culture, and craft.

A Tale of Easter Ovens: Food and Collective Memory

Abstract: At a time when drink available in gas station coolers promise exotic ingredients to boost your memory powers, my own interest in food and memory meets with bem usem ent from friends and colleagues.' Both the study of food and of memory are relatively recent subjects in anthropology and social science more generally, and thus their convergence still provokes surprise and curiosity. In the words of one colleague, “Food and memory? Why would anyone want to remember anything they had eaten?” In this essay I wish to reflect on this question, and in keeping w ith the them e of this issue, pose the question in term s of “social” or “collective” memory. In what ways does food, ingested into individual bodies, feed social memory? Recently, a number of scholars have suggested that the topic of social memory suffers from a lack of precision in definition, a lack of common methodology and a lack of theoretical development.

How Buildings 'Surprise': The Renovation of the Alte Aula in Vienna

Abstract: Can old buildings faithfully transmit social meaning? Conservation studies have taught us for decades that buildings are valuable for their historical substance and symbolic value gradually acquired with time. Drawing on an Actor-Network-Theory-inspired perspective to tackle buildings, this article questions the philosophy of preservation studies and their definitions of building and agency. Following the process of renovation of the 17th century Alte Aula in Vienna, I explore its dynamics and unpredictable drifts. Renovating is not about transforming a passive and subservient object; it rather offers an experimental situation in which one can witness the building recalcitrance, i.e., its capacity to manifest itself as disobedient as possible to the protocol of renovation, to resist the attempts of control and to ‘surprise’ its makers. A building is, I argue here, a complex mediator that skilfully redistributes the agency among human and nonhuman participants in renovation, provokes contextual mutations and transforms social meanings.

Blindside: How to Anticipate Forcing Events and Wild Cards in Global Politics

Abstract: A host of catastrophes, natural and otherwise, as well as some pleasant surprises --like the sudden end of the cold war without a shot being fired --have caught governments and societies unprepared many times in recent decades. September 11 is only the most obvious recent example among many unforeseen events that have changed, even redefined our lives. We have every reason to expect more such events in future. Several kinds of unanticipated scenarios --particularly those of low probability and high impact --have the potential to escalate into systemic crises. Even positive surprises can be major policy challenges. Anticipating and managing low-probability events is a critically important challenge to contemporary policymakers, who increasingly recognize that they lack the analytical tools to do so. Developing such tools is the focus of this insightful and perceptive volume, edited by renowned author Francis Fukuyama and sponsored by The American Interest magazine. Blindside is organized into four main sections. "Thinking about Strategic Surprise" addresses the psychological and institutional obstacles that prevent leaders from planning for low-probability tragedies and allocating the necessary resources to deal with them. The following two sections pinpoint the failures --institutional as well as personal --that allowed key historical events to take leaders by surprise, and examine the philosophies and methodologies of forecasting. In "Pollyana vs. Cassandra," for example, James Kurth and Gregg Easterbrook debate the future state of the world going forward. Mitchell Waldrop explores why technology forecasting is so poor and why that is likely to remain the case. In the book's final section, "What Could Be," internationally renowned authorities discuss low probability, high-impact contingencies in their area of expertise. For example, Scott Barrett looks at emerging infectious diseases, while Gal Luft and Anne Korin discuss energy security. How can we avoid being blindsided by unforeseen events? There is no easy or obvious answer. But it is essential that we understand the obstacles that prevent us first from seeing the future clearly and then from acting appropriately on our insights. This readable and fascinating book is an important step in that direction.

Playing twenty questions with nature (the surprise version): reflections on the dynamics of experience

Abstract: It is a common complaint that the science of cognition does not do justice to either the reality of cognition in the wild or to the demands of engineering socio-technical systems. This article draws on examples from early functionalist/pragmatist views in psychology, modern physics and dynamical systems theory to explore the ontological basis of this complaint. Tentative steps are made toward a new way to frame an ontology of experience. In this framework, the duality (complementary nature) of control and observation is offered as an alternative to the dichotomy (independent nature) of mind and matter.

Towards Improving Visual-Facial Emotion Recognition through Use of Complementary Keyboard-Stroke Pattern Information

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the possibility of improving the accuracy of visual-facial emotion recognition through use of additional (complementary) keyboard-stroke information. The investigation is based on two empirical studies that we have conducted involving human subjects and human observers. The studies were concerned with the recognition of emotions from a visual-facial modality and keyboard-stroke information, respectively. They were inspired by the relative shortage of such previous research in empirical work concerning the strengths and weaknesses of each modality so that the extent can be determined to which the keyboard-stroke information complements and improves the emotion recognition accuracy of the visual-facial modality. Specifically, our research focused on the recognition of six basic emotion states, namely happiness, sadness, surprise, anger and disgust as well as the emotionless state which we refer to as neutral. We have found that the visual-facial modality may allow the recognition of certain states, such as neutral and surprise, with sufficient accuracy. However, its accuracy in recognizing anger and happiness can be improved significantly if assisted by keyboard-stroke information.

When Deep Structures Surface: Design Structures That Can Repeatedly Surprise

Abstract: Recent findings in the creativity and marketing literature have revealed a seemingly unexpected phenomenon: Creative ideas frequently share similar design structures and patterns. The present study extends recent research regarding the impact of creative design structures. It addresses the question of whether ads that use the same structure that appears repeatedly in various ads would consistently be judged as original and favorable or whether such judgments would diminish over occurrences of ad exposure. The studies show that, by and large, subjects do not discover the formula of the design structure. Moreover, even if subjects are informed about it explicitly, the impact of ads matching a single design structure shown consecutively is not undermined over exposures. As a result, despite the repeated use of a design structure in series of exposures to ads with unrelated contents, originality evaluations remain high.

Negotiation, Meet New Governance: Interests, Skills, and Selves

Abstract: In this article, I critically examine two bodies of scholarship: negotiation literature and new governance literature. To that end, I consider The Negotiator's Fieldbook (2006), an ambitious survey of negotiation theory and practice edited by Andrea Kupfer Schneider and Christopher Honeyman, and key works by U.S. new governance architects, Michael Dorf, Charles Sabel, and William Simon. This comparison may surprise readers since negotiation literature largely focuses on interpersonal dynamics, and new governance literature aims at institutional change. I argue that these two literatures share similar assumptions about subjectivity that drive their sense of political hopefulness. In short, both envision a flexible problem-solving subject—shaped in negotiation by a discourse of skills and in new governance by a discourse of institutional design. Based on this descriptive claim, I illustrate how reading these literatures together suggests alternative perspectives from which to consider questions of power, inequality, and distribution relevant to both fields. When no firm and lasting ties any longer unite men, it is impossible to obtain the cooperation of any great number of them unless you can persuade every man whose help is required that he serves his private interests by voluntarily uniting his efforts to those of all the others. Alexis de Tocqueville (1969, 517)

The Surprise-Delight Relationship Revisited in the Management of Experience

Abstract: Practitioners firmly believe that customer delight, through surprise, offers a source of competitive advantage. Yet, competing conceptualizations, methodologies, and stimuli in existing studies of ...

Manners in medicine: What's in a name?

Abstract: As a patient I have been quite taken aback that whenever I’ve seen doctors recently they have called me by my first name while introducing themselves by their title and surname. I find it distinctly unhelpful in my interaction with another adult to be addressed like a child by their teacher when the experience of illness is already making me feel unsettled, vulnerable, and anxious.1 Whenever I have raised this matter of unequal address during a consultation, it has been met with surprise and the mention of wanting to make me feel at ease. In Germany it would be unthinkable for a doctor to introduce himself as Dr Schmidt while summoning a patient from the waiting room by calling out “Helmut” or “Angela.” I am curious as to whether there have been any recent guidelines to encourage this practice in Britain, why it seems to be the norm, and why do so few people question, let alone challenge, it? This is occurring at the same time as there is so much talked and written about patients’ dignity, the doctor-patient partnership, respect, and empowerment.

Surprise-Based Learning for Developmental Robotics

Abstract: This paper presents a learning algorithm called surprise-based learning (SBL) capable of providing a physical robot the ability to autonomously learn and plan in an unknown environment without any prior knowledge of its actions or their impact on the environment. This is achieved by creating a model of the environment using prediction rules. A prediction rule describes the observations of the environment prior to the execution of an action and the forecasted or predicted observation of the environment after the action. The algorithm learns by investigating "surprises", which are inconsistencies between the predictions and observed outcome. SBL has been successfully demonstrated on a modular robot learning and navigating in a small static environment.

Ethics and reflective practice: continuing the conversation

Abstract: This paper is a response to the question asked by Tony Ghaye in Reflective Practice Volume 8, Number 2, 2007, ‘Is reflective practice ethical?’. My response is to re‐consider the pervasive idea in reflective practice that experience is always private and personal. This common understanding of experience leads to a reluctance when writing for the purpose of assessment and to a type of writing that tends towards the confessional. Contrary to that notion of experience, I suggest that a return to Charles Sanders Peirce enables the acknowledgement that experience is not personally owned but rather a conversation between the self and that which is not‐yet known. This conversation is precipitated by the element of surprise, thus making the study of surprise a central feature of reflective practice. This argument is illustrated through examining a dramatic moment in Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical novel Thus spake Zarathustra (1887) in which Zarathustra’s teaching techniques are challenged and rendered differ...

An Experimental Study of Simulated Web-Based Threats and Their Impact on Knowledge Communication Effectiveness

Abstract: It is evolutionarily adaptive for humans to have enhanced memories of events surrounding surprise situations, because in our ancestral past surprise situations were often associated with survival threats. Vividly remembering memories immediately before and after a snake attack, for example, allowed our hominid ancestors to be better prepared to avoid and deal with future attacks, which in turn enhanced their chances of survival. This study shows that such enhanced memorization capacity likely endowed on us by evolution can be exploited for knowledge communication through computer interfaces. A knowledge communication experiment was conducted in which subjects were asked to review Web-based learning modules about International Commercial Terms (Incoterms), and then take a test on what they had learned. Data from six learning modules in two experimental conditions were contrasted. In the treatment condition, a Web-based screen with a snake picture in attack position, displayed together with a hissing background noise, was used to create a simulated threat that surprised the subjects. In the control condition the simulated threat was absent. As expected, based on the evolutionary psychological view that surprise can enhance learning, the subjects in the treatment condition (i.e., with the snake screen) did approximately 28% better than those in the control condition (i.e., without the snake screen) at learning about Incoterms. This improvement occurred only for the two Web-based modules immediately before and after the snake screen. Those two modules comprise what is referred to in this study as the surprise zone. There were no significant differences in learning performance between the two experimental conditions for modules outside the surprise zone.