A formative study evaluating the perception of personality traits for planning-based narrative generation

Abstract

The presence of interesting and compelling characters is an essential component of effective narrative. Well-developed characters have features that enable them to significantly enhance the believability and quality of a story. We present an experiment designed to gauge an audience’s perception of specific aspects of character personality traits expressed through the characters’ choices for action. The experiment served as a formative evaluation for work on the development of the Mask system for the automatic generation of narratives that express character traits through choice. Results from our study evaluate the hypothesis that the relationship between choices and the actions they lead to can be used in narrative to produce the perception of specific personality traits in an audience.