Arguments as a new perspective on character motive in stories

Abstract

We often try to teach people through stories and narratives instead of giving them explicit facts and rules. But how do these stories influence us, how do they persuade us to change our attitudes? In this paper, we aim to answer these questions by providing a computational model that offers an internal perspective on character motives in stories. This model allows us to represent the deliberations of the main characters and how they weighed their values and motives given their attitudes. We illustrate out model by discussing the well known fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper and the parable of the Prodigal Son.