CBB Seminar ~ Peng Qian, PhD, Harvard University

Peng Qian, Ph.D. Harvard University Post-Doc

Loopholes: When and why people exploit the ambiguity of language
Loopholes offer an opening. Rather than comply or directly refuse, people can subvert an intended request by an intentional misunderstanding. Such behaviors exploit ambiguity and under-specification in language. In this talk, I will present a series of studies of people's evaluation and expectation of loophole-engaging acts in everyday social interaction. I will describe a utility-theoretic recursive social reasoning model that formalizes and accounts for loopholes. The model implements the decision process of a loophole-aware listener, who trades off their own utility with that of the speaker, and considers an expected social penalty for non-cooperative behavior. The social penalty is computed through the listener's recursive reasoning about a virtual naive observer's inference of a naive listener's social intent. This model captures qualitative patterns in the human behavioral data and generates new quantitative predictions consistent with novel studies. I will conclude the talk with broader implications of this work on other aspects of social reasoning, including humor and deniability.