Perceptions
of Charisma from Spoken Language in Standard American English and Palestinian
Arabic
Julia Hirschberg
Columbia University
Joint work
with Andrew Rosenberg and Fadi Biadsy -- and thanks to Wisam Dakka
SRI, 26 July
2007
What is Charisma?
- The ability to attract,
and retain followers by virtue of personal characteristics -- not traditional
or political office (Weber ‘47)
- E.g. Gandhi, Hitler,
Castro, Martin Luther King Jr.,..
- Personalismo
- What makes an individual charismatic? (Bird ’93, Boss ’76, Dowis ’00,
Marcus ’67, Touati ’93, Tuppen ’74, Weber ‘47)
- Their message?
- Their personality?
- Their speaking style?
What is Charismatic Speech?
- Circularly…
- Speech that leads
listeners to perceive the speaker as charismatic
- What aspects of
speech might contribute to the perception of a speaker as charismatic?
- Content of the message?
- Lexico-syntactic
features?
- Acoustic-prosodic
features?
Is Charisma a Culture-Dependent Phenomenon?
- Do people of different
languages and cultures perceive charisma differently?
- Do they perceive charismatic speech differently?
- Do Arabic listeners
respond to American politicians the same way Americans do?
- Do Americans hear
Swedish professors the same way Swedish students do?
Why Study Charismatic Speech?
- It’s an interesting
phenomenon
- To identify potential charismatic leaders
- To provide a feedback
system for individuals who want to improve their speaking style -- politicians,
professors, students…
- To create a charismatic Text-to-Speech system
Our Approach
- Collect tokens of charismatic and non-charismatic speech from a
small set of speakers on a small set of topics
- Ask listeners to
rate the ‘The
speaker is charismatic’
plus statements about a number of other attributes (e.g. The speaker
is …boring, charming, persuasive,…)
- Correlate listener
ratings with lexico-syntactic and acoustic-prosodic features of the
tokens to identify potential cues to perception of charisma
American
English Perception Study
- Data: 45 2-30s speech
segments, 5 each from 9 candidates for Democratic nomination for U.S.
president in 2004
- 2 ‘charismatic’, 2 ‘not charismatic’
- Topics: greeting,
reasons for running, tax cuts, postwar Iraq, healthcare
- 4 genres: stump
speeches, debates, interviews, ads
- 8 subjects rated each segment on a Likert scale (1-5)
for 26
questions in a
web survey
- Duration: avg. 1.5
hrs, min 45m, max ~3hrs
Results:
How Much Do Subjects Agree with Each Other?
- Over all statements?
- Using weighted kappa
statistic with quadratic weighting, mean = 0.207
- On the charismatic statement?
-
= 0.232 (8th most agreed upon statement)
- By token?
- No significant differences
across all tokens
- By statement?
- Individual statements
demonstrate significantly different agreements (most agreement: The
speaker is accusatory; least agreement: The speaker is trustworthy)
Results:
What Do Subjects Mean by Charismatic?
- Which other
statements are most closely correlated with the
charismatic statement?
(determined by kappa): a functional definition
-0.513
The speaker is boring
0.577
The speaker is persuasive
0.499
The speaker is convincing
0.543
The speaker is passionate
0.575
The speaker is charming
0.620
The speaker is enthusiastic
Results:
Does Whether a Subject Agrees with the Speaker or Finds the Speaker
‘Clear’ Affect Charisma Judgments
- Whether a subject
agrees with a token does not
correlate highly with charisma judgments (0.30)
- Whether a subject
finds the token clear does not
correlate highly with charisma judgments (0.26)
Results:
Does the Identity of the Speaker Affect Judgments of Charisma?
- There is a significant
difference between speakers (p=2.20e-2)
- Most charismatic
- Rep. John Edwards
(mean 3.86)
- Rev. Al Sharpton
(3.56)
- Gov. Howard Dean
(3.40)
- Least charismatic
- Sen. Joseph Lieberman
(2.42)
- Rep. Dennis Kucinich
(2.65)
- Rep. Richard Gephardt
(2.93)
Results:
Does Recognizing a Speaker Affect Judgments of Charisma?
- Subjects asked
to identify which, if any, speakers they recognized at the end of the
study.
- Mean number of
speakers believed to have been recognized, 5.8
- Subjects rated
‘recognized’ speakers as significantly more charismatic than those they did not (mean 3.39
vs. mean 3.30).
Results:
Does Genre or Topic Affect Judgments of Charisma?
- Recall that tokens
were taken from debates, interviews, stump speeches, and campaign ads
- Genre does influence charisma ratings (p=.00035)
- Stump speeches were
the most charismatic (3.38)
- Interviews were
the least (2.96)
- Topic did
not affect ratings of charisma significantly (p=.059) altho
- Healthcare >
post-war Iraq > reasons for running neutral > taxes
What makes
Speech Charismatic?
Features Examined
- Duration (secs,
words, syls)
- Charismatic speech is personal: Pronoun
density
- Charismatic speech is contentful:
Function/content word ratio
- Charismatic speech is simple: Complexity:
mean syllables/word (Dowis)
- Disfluencies
- Repeated words
- Min, max, mean,
stdev F0 (Boss, Tuppen)
- Raw and normalized
by speaker
- Min, max, mean,
stdev intensity
- Speaking rate (syls/sec)
- Intonational features:
- Pitch accents
- Phrasal tones
- Contours
Results:
Lexico-Syntactic Correlates of Charisma
- Length: Greater
number of words positively correlates with charisma (p=0)
- Personal pronouns:
- Density of first
person plural and third person singular pronouns positively
correlates with charisma (p=0, p=0)
- Third person plural
pronoun density correlates negatively with charisma (p=1.47e-5)
- Content: Higher
ratio of function/content words positively correlates
with charisma (p=.035)
- Complexity: Higher
mean syllables/word positively correlates with charisma
- Disfluency: greater
% negatively correlates with charisma (p=6.02e-5)
- Repetition: Proportion
of repeated words positively correlates with charisma (p=.001)
Results:
Acoustic-Prosodic Correlates of Charisma
- Pitch:
- Higher F0 (mean,
min over male speakers) positively correlates with charisma (p=1.98e-6, p=0)
- Normalized mean
F0 positively correlates with charisma and normalized max approaches significant
correlation (p=.013, p=.064)
- Loudness: Greater
mean intensity tends to positively correlate with charisma (p=.053)
- Speaking Rate:
- Faster overall rate
shows positively correlates with charisma (p=.000)
- Faster rate within
fastest intonational phrase does too (p=.004)
- Duration: Longer
duration correlates positively with charisma (p=.015)
- Length of pause:
sdev negatively correlates with charisma
Results:
Prosodic Correlates of Charisma (Hand-Annotated Features)
- Pitch Accent Type:
- Positive
correlation with H* accents (p=.004)
- Negative
correlation with L*+H accents (p=.003) and with L* accents (p=1.15e-5)
- Phrasal Types
- Negative
correlation with rising phrase boundaries (p=.001)
- Negative
correlation with downstepped contour presence in token (p=.0025)
Summary
- In Standard American
English, charismatic speakers tend to be those also highly
rated for enthusiasm, charm, persuasiveness, passionateness and convincingness
– they are not thought to be boring
- Charismatic utterances tend to be longer
than others, to contain a smaller proportion of content to function
words, a higher density of first person plural and third person
singular pronouns and fewer third person plurals, fewer disfluencies,
a larger percentage of repeated words, and more complex words
than non-charismatic utterances
- Charismatic utterances are higher in pitch
(mean, min) and with more regularity in pause length, greater
in intensity, faster, and with more H* accents than L*
and L*+H, fewer rising contours, and fewer downstepped
contours
Replication
of Perception Study from Text Alone
- Lower statement
agreement, much less on charismatic
statement, different speakers
most/least charismatic
- `Agreement with
speaker’, genre and topic had stronger correlations
- Lexico-syntactic
features show weaker correlations
- 1st person
pronoun density negatively correlated and complexity not
at all
- Similar to speech
experiment for duration, function/content, disfluencies, repeated words
Charisma Across Cultures
- Is the same true
for charismatic utterances in other languages and
cultures?
- If a Palestinian
Arabic speaker judges charisma from Arabic utterances, will we find
similar or different correlates of charismatic speech?
- If an American
listens to Palestinian speech, will their judgments be similar to Palestinians?
If a Palestinian listens to our American tokens, will their judgments
be similar to our American listeners?
Charismatic
Speech in Palestinian Arabic
- Are these tokens charismatic?:
Palestinian
Arabic Perception Study
- Same paradigm as
for SAE
- Materials:
- 44 speech tokens
from 22 male native-Palestinian Arabic speakers taken from Al-Jazeera
TV talk shows
- Two speech segments
extracted for each speaker from the same topic (one thought charismatic and one not)
- Web form with statements
to be rated translated into Arabic
- Subjects: 12 native
speakers of Palestinian Arabic
Data
10.3 minutes
Total corpus duration:
3 seconds
Token with min duration:
28 seconds
Token with max duration:
14 seconds
Average token duration:
30 words
Average number of words in
token:
65 words
Token with max words:
9 words
Token with min words:
1322 words
Total number of words:
How Does
Charisma Differ in Arabic?
- Subjects agree
on judgments a bit more (κ=.225) than for English (κ=.207) but still
low
- Agree most on clarity
of msg, enthusiasm, charisma, intensity, anger of speaker
- Agree least on spontaneity,
ordinariness, friendliness, desperation, passionateness of speaker
- Charisma statement correlates (positively)
most strongly with speaker toughness, powerfulness, persuasiveness,
enthusiasm, charm, and negatively with boringness
- Role of speaker
identity important in judgments of charisma in Arabic as in English
- Most charismatic
speakers: Ibrahim Hamami (4.75), Azmi Bishara (4.42), Mustafa Barghouti
(4.33)
- Least: Shafiq Al-Hoot
(3.10), Azzam Al-Ahmad (3.33), Mohammed Al-Tamini (3.42)
- Raters claimed to
recognize only .55 speakers on average, perhaps because the speakers
were less well known than the Americans
- Topic important
in judgments of charisma (p=.043)
- Israeli separation
wall > assassination of Hamas leader > debates among Palestinian
groups > the Palestinian Authority and calls for reform > the
Intifada and resistance
Lexical Cues
to Charisma
- Length in words
positively correlates with charisma, as in English
- Disfluency rate
negatively correlates, as in English
- Repeated words
positively correlates with charisma, as in English
- Presence of Arabic
‘dialect’ (words, pronunciations) negatively correlates
with charisma
- Density of third
person plural pronouns positively correlates w/ charisma – differing from English
Acoustic/Prosodic
Cues to Charisma
- Duration was
positively correlated with charisma, as in English
- Speaking rate
approached negative correlation – opposite from English
- But rate of the
fastest intonational phrase in the token positively correlated
for both languages
- Sdev of rate across
intonational phrases positively correlated for charisma in Arabic
- Pauses
- #pauses/words ratio
positively correlated with charisma – not in English
- Sdev of length of
pause positively correlated in Arabic but negatively in
English
- Pitch:
- Mean pitch
positively correlates (as in English) but also F0 max and sdev
- Min pitch
negatively correlates (opposite from English)
- Intensity: Sdev
positively correlates w/ charisma
How Are Perceptions
of Charisma Similar Across Cultures?
- Level of subject
agreement on statements
- Role of speaker
ID in charisma judgments
- Positive correlations
with charisma
- Duration, repeated
words
- Speaking rate of
fastest IP
- Negative correlations
with charism
How Do Charisma
Judgments Differ Across Cultures?
- Statements most
and least agreed upon
- Role of topic in
charisma judgments
- Positive correlations
with charisma
- Sdev of speaking
rate, pause/word ratio, sdev of pause length, F0 max and sdev, sdev
intensity
- Negative correlations
with charisma
- Dialect, density
of third person plural pronouns
- Speaking rate, min
F0
Future Work
- Complete machine
learning experiments on automatic detection of charisma
- Complete perception
experiments of Arabic with American listeners and American English with
Palestinian listeners
- Swedish, Japanese
next….
- And….
- Perception studies
for resynthesized American and Arabic tokens
- An automatic charisma scorer for American English and Palestinian
Arabic
Thank you!
Arabic Prosodic
Phenomena
MSA vs. Dialect
- A word is considered
dialectal if:
- It does not exist
in the standard Arabic lexicon
- It does not satisfy
the MSA morphotactic constraints
- Phonetically different
(e.g., ya?kul vs. ywkil)
- In corpus of tokens
- 8% of the words
are dialect.
- 80% of the dialect
words are accented.
Arabic Prosody:
Accentuation
- 70% of words are
accented
- 60% of the de-accented
words are function words or disfluent items
- Based on automatic
POS analysis (MADA)
- 12% of content
words are deaccented
- Distribution of
accent types:
- H* or !H* pitch
accent, 73%
- L+H* or L+!H*, 20%
- L*, 5%
- H+!H*, 2%
Arabic Prosody:
Phrasing
- Mean of 1.6 intermediate
phrases per intonational phrase
- Intermediate phrases
contain 2.4 words on average
- Distribution of
phrase accent/boundary tone combinations
- L-L% 59%
- H-L% 26%
- L-H% 8%
- H-L% 6%
- H-H% 1%
Arabic Prosody
– most common contours
2.1
L+H* H-
2.3
H* !H* !H* L-
3
H* H* H-
3
L+H* !H* L-
4.1
L* L-
4.1
H* !H* L-
7.6
H* H* L-
9.7
L+H* L-
13.4
H* H-
21.9
H* L-
Arabic Prosody
– Disfluency
- In addition to
standard disfluency:
- Hesitations
- filled pauses
- self-repairs
- In Arabic, speakers
could produce a sequence of all of the above. (see praat: file: 1036
and 2016)
- Disfluency may
disconnect prepositions and conjunctions from the content word:
- ولتأتي =>
و ... لـ ... يعني ... تأتي
- w- l- uh- yEny uh-
t?ty instead of wlt?ty
