Do Emotions Really Affect Argument Convincingness? A Dynamic Approach with LLM-based Manipulation Checks

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Hauptverfasser: Chen, Yanran, Eger, Steffen
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Chen, Yanran
Eger, Steffen
author_facet Chen, Yanran
Eger, Steffen
contents Emotions have been shown to play a role in argument convincingness, yet this aspect is underexplored in the natural language processing (NLP) community. Unlike prior studies that use static analyses, focus on a single text domain or language, or treat emotion as just one of many factors, we introduce a dynamic framework inspired by manipulation checks commonly used in psychology and social science; leveraging LLM-based manipulation checks, this framework examines the extent to which perceived emotional intensity influences perceived convincingness. Through human evaluation of arguments across different languages, text domains, and topics, we find that in over half of cases, human judgments of convincingness remain unchanged despite variations in perceived emotional intensity; when emotions do have an impact, they more often enhance rather than weaken convincingness. We further analyze whether 11 LLMs behave like humans in the same scenario, finding that while LLMs generally mirror human patterns, they struggle to capture nuanced emotional effects in individual judgments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_00024
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Do Emotions Really Affect Argument Convincingness? A Dynamic Approach with LLM-based Manipulation Checks
Chen, Yanran
Eger, Steffen
Computation and Language
Emotions have been shown to play a role in argument convincingness, yet this aspect is underexplored in the natural language processing (NLP) community. Unlike prior studies that use static analyses, focus on a single text domain or language, or treat emotion as just one of many factors, we introduce a dynamic framework inspired by manipulation checks commonly used in psychology and social science; leveraging LLM-based manipulation checks, this framework examines the extent to which perceived emotional intensity influences perceived convincingness. Through human evaluation of arguments across different languages, text domains, and topics, we find that in over half of cases, human judgments of convincingness remain unchanged despite variations in perceived emotional intensity; when emotions do have an impact, they more often enhance rather than weaken convincingness. We further analyze whether 11 LLMs behave like humans in the same scenario, finding that while LLMs generally mirror human patterns, they struggle to capture nuanced emotional effects in individual judgments.
title Do Emotions Really Affect Argument Convincingness? A Dynamic Approach with LLM-based Manipulation Checks
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.00024