#  CBB Seminar ~ Peng Qian, PhD, Harvard University 

 



####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **October 10, 2024** 

 12:00PM - 01:15PM EDT 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **William James Hall ~ 1st fl Seminar room 105 - (Boxed lunch:11:45 a.m., across WJH Lobby in DOSS Lounge)**  



 

 



 

 **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.



 

 



 

 See also:- [ Cognition, Brain, & Behavior Lunch ](/event-type/cognition-brain-behavior-lunch)
- [ Cognition, Brain, & Behavior ](/research-areas/cognition-brain-behavior)
 
 

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