Our approach uses several points of leverage. These are based on the ideas that human emotion can be broadly, but accurately, represented at a descriptive level suitable for story representation; that the communication of human emotion is often indirect, and inaccurate; and that humans have a natural tendency to project plausible interpretations onto social interactions and observed emotion expressions. Following are the most salient points of leverage on which we hope to capitalize.
First, the underlying descriptive emotion theory that we have used in the Affective Reasoning project, based largely on the OCC model [Ortony, Clore, & Collins1988], has been exercised, and extended, over the years based largely on its usefulness in describing human emotion narratives. That is, where the theory has not been sufficient to describe some scenario it has had to be extended; where it has had a component that has not been necessary in describing scenarios it has been reduced. In this ongoing process we have described portions of something like six hundred different scenarios. Through this process we have made progress toward a cannonical form for the reresentation of the human emotion aspects of stories.
Second, in previous work we have given many examples illustrating that humans can have multiple, even conflicting, emotions stemming from the same emotion-eliciting events (e.g., as in [Elliott1992a]). For example, suppose that one unexpectedly comes by desperately needed money, but it is inherited because a much admired, and loved, favorite uncle dies. News of the uncle's death might simultaneously lead to distress over the loss of a loved one, joy over newly-inherited wealth, relief over escaping from creditors, anger that death came to the family, guilt over feeling happy about the benefits derived from the uncle's death, remorse over not having spent more time with the uncle recently, etc. What this means for story-morphing is that, with respect to interpretations of emotion eliciting situations, we are not so burdened with the ``foolish consistency'' that is the hobgoblin of plot structures.
Third, humans seem inclined to project not only anthropomorphic qualities to most everything, but also social qualities to most everything that has agent-like attributes and interacts in ways perceivable as supporting a community. Given a set of agents engaged in dialog, or characters interacting in a script, people naturally attribute human-like motivations to the agents/characters for their actions. We humorously refer to scripted presentations of our personality-rich agents as a multimedia Rorschach test - but there is a strong element of truth in this line of thinking.
Fourth, facial expressions, music, and inflections in spoken text seem to trigger explanatory mechanisms -- that there is some sort of cognitive dissonance that is quelled only when observers abductively attribute narrative qualities to sequenced expressions, and other social cues, on which they can hang the complex fabric of the interaction.