This dissertation describes a series of studies conducted to explore why people use information visualizations during their non-work time (casual InfoVis) and which factors are critical for visualization adoption and long duration use. I also model typical casual InfoVis usage patterns and provide a framework for future hypothesis testing. Each study explored a different facet of casual InfoVis research and each built on lessons from the previous studies. The first study explored the development and evaluation of a casual InfoVis system, PartyVote, and how visualizations can be used to aid informal group social interactions. Results from the evaluation indicate that the system successfully helped give people a more equal share in choosing music during social gatherings and people could strategically choose music, but social pressures did not constrain behaviors or reduce cheating as much as expected. The complexity of factors affecting PartyVote use led to a pseudo-experiment evaluating the appeal of motion based data encoding. Study results indicated that participants formed distinct opinion-based groups and motion data encoding was only considered appealing to less than half of the participants. Utility was a critical factor for half the participants, but a sizable group still preferred motion use, despite knowing that it reduced system utility. My final study examined how people encountered and used visual representations of data (artifacts) during their non-work time. The artifact study led me to develop the Promoter / Inhibitor Motivation Model (PIMM) of casual visualization interaction. PIMM subsequently helps explain results encountered during the first two studies. The model provides a framework for future casual InfoVis investigations and identifies potential shortfalls and areas of concern when conducting casual InfoVis research. PIMM should also help guide future casual InfoVis system designs. / Graduate

Automated planning is a branch of AI that addresses the problem of generating a course of action to achieve a specified objective, given an initial state of the world. It is an area that is central to the development of intelligent agents and autonomous robots. In the last decade, automated planning has seen significant progress in terms of scalability, much of it achieved by the development of heuristic search approaches. Many of these advances, are only immediately applicable to so-called classical planning tasks. However, there are compelling applications of planning that are non-classical. An example is the problem of web service composition, in which the objective is to automatically compose web artifacts to achieve the objective of a human user. In doing so, not only the hard goals but also the \emph{preferences} of the user---which are usually not considered in the classical model---must be considered. % Also, the automated composition %should deal with abstract representations of the web %artifacts---which may also not adjust to the classical model. In this thesis we show that many of the most successful advances in classical planning can be leveraged for solving compelling non-classical problems. In particular, we focus on the following non-classical planning problems: planning with temporally extended goals; planning with rich, temporally extended preferences; planning with procedural control, and planning with procedural programs that can sense the environment. We show that to efficiently solve these problems we can use a common approach: reformulation. For each of these planning tasks, we propose a reformulation algorithm that generates another, arguably simpler instance. Then, if necessary, we adapt existing techniques to make the reformulated instance solvable efficiently. In particular, we show that both the problems of planning with temporally extended goals and with procedural control can be mapped into classical planning. Planning with rich user preferences, even after reformulation, cannot be mapped into classical planning and thus we develop specialized heuristics, based on existing heuristics, together with a branch-and-bound algorithm. Finally, for the problem of planning with programs that sense, we show that under certain conditions programs can be reduced to simple operators, enabling the use of a variety of existing planners. In all cases, we show experimentally that the reformulated problems can be solved effectively by either existing planners or by our adapted planners, outperforming previous approaches.

The purpose of the following research was to test the prediction that a sense of social connectedness to a stranger would result in the tendency to share psychological states with him/her. An overview of the literature on state sharing and the psychological merging between other and self is described in Chapter 1. The first test of my prediction is provided in Chapter 2 where I demonstrate that participants who are led to feel socially connected to a confederate--by sharing idiosyncratic preferences in common with her--resulted in the propensity to take on her goals. In Chapter 3, participants who felt connected to a confederate who was asked to complete a stressful speech task experienced more stress themselves. This effect occurred in part through a sense of felt “oneness” with the confederate. Chapter 4 extended these findings by showing that socially connected participants tended to experience secondary appraisal emotions in line with the confederate’s appraisal of the stressful speech task and this occurred through a sense of felt oneness with the confederate. In Chapter 5, participants who felt connected to an outgroup member tended to experience greater empathy for another outgroup member who experienced discrimination. The implications for social interaction in general and for intergroup relations in particular are discussed in Chapter 6.

Lord and Brown (Lord, Brown, & Freiberg, 1999; Lord & Brown, 2004) suggest that leaders may impact followers by priming certain goals or ideals in their followers’ minds, which in turn influence judgment and behaviour. The current research examined whether transformational and transactional leaders unconsciously affect the values followers adopt and the goals they pursue, specifically the impact leaders have on follower self-interest. Although the relationship between leadership and self-interest has attracted a good deal of theoretical attention, little empirical work has been conducted to explore the impact of leadership on self-interest. Using established priming techniques, I demonstrated in three studies that transformational and transactional leaders affect self-interest in characteristic ways. In Study 1, participants read about a transformational and transactional leader and were subsequently primed with the image of one of the leaders. The results showed that participants primed with the transformational leader exhibited lower self-interest than those primed with the transactional leader. Study 2 replicated this effect, and demonstrated that the image of the leaders had a nonconscious effect on participants’ self-interest that was measurable after a delay of three days. Furthermore, this study found that participants’ pre-existing levels of prosocial values moderated the effectiveness of the prime. Study 3 extended the results of the first two studies by demonstrating that priming participants with a transformational leader significantly lowered self-interest in a context where individual gain was salient, and the transactional leader increased self-interest in a context focused on collective outcomes.

Personality is a key component of characters that inhabit immersive virtual environments, such as games and virtual agent applications. In order to be distinguishable from other characters in the environment, each character should have its own personality in the form of different observable behaviour, not solely in its physical appearance or animation. Previous work in this field has mostly relied on time-consuming, handcrafted characters and static, trait-based approaches to personality. Our goal is a method to develop complex, individual personalities without handcrafting every behaviour. Unlike most implemented versions of personality theories, cognitive-social theories of personality address how personality is developed and adapts throughout childhood and over our lifetimes. Cognitive-social theories also emphasise the importance of situations in determining how we behave. From this basis, we believe that personality should be individual, adaptive, and based on context. Characters in current state-of-the-art games and virtual environments do not demonstrate all of these features without extensive handcrafting. We propose a model where personality influences both decision-making and evaluation of reward. Characters use their past experiences in the form of simple somatic markers, or gut-instinct, to make decisions; and determine rewards based on their own personal goals, rather than via external feedback. We evaluated the model by implementation of a simple game and tested it using quantitative criteria, including a purpose-designed individuality measure. Results indicate that, although characters are given the same initial personality template, it is possible to develop different personalities (in the form of behaviour) based on their unique experiences in the environment and relationships with other characters. This work shows a way forward for more automated development of personalities that are individual, context-aware and adapt to users and the environment.

Narcissists typically present themselves in self-enhancing ways to gain validation (through positive social appraisals) of grandiose, yet uncertain self-views. Using e-mail, Studies 1 and 2 investigated several intra- and interpersonal variables that may influence narcissists� self-presentational behaviour. University students rated themselves on self domains requiring either external validation (e.g., attractiveness) or internal validation (e.g., morality), after being randomly assigned to be either accountable or non-accountable to an evaluative audience for their self-ratings (Study 1), to present their self-ratings to either a single or multiple person evaluative audience (Study 2), and to expect to present their self-ratings to either a high or low status evaluative audience (Studies 1 and 2). Results suggested that when degree of external self-worth contingency (Crocker & Wolfe, 2001) was high, narcissists were insensitive to strategic self-presentational requirements, presenting themselves in a typically self-enhancing manner on external domains when accountable and when presenting to a multiple person audience. Non-narcissists showed more contextual sensitivity when degree of external self-worth contingency was high, and were more modest when these social contextual variables were present. Participants in Study 3 were given bogus positive or negative personality feedback on either their moral virtue or competitive spirit. Narcissists reported greater anger after receiving negative feedback, while also responding to negative feedback with inflated self-presentations. A key finding was that the combination of a high degree of self-worth contingency and negative feedback resulted in increases in self-reported depression and drops in state self-esteem in narcissists. Results suggest that narcissists are chronically vigilant for self-enhancement opportunities, but may be insensitive to social constraints and norms in their efforts to construct their grandiose identities. Narcissists are especially vigilant for self-enhancement opportunities on contingent domains, yet when negative feedback is received in these domains where self-worth is staked, depression and lowered self-esteem may result.

Diss. Umeå : Univ., 2004.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Linköping : Linköpings universitet, 2007. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1980.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1980.