Conversational Markers of Constructive Discussions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a framework for analyzing conversational dynamics to predict the productivity of task-oriented discussions, using linguistic cues and patterns from early in the conversation.

Contribution

It presents a novel framework that leverages conversational patterns and linguistic cues to assess discussion productivity, validated through an online collaborative game setting.

Findings

Linguistic cues from the first 20 seconds predict discussion productivity.

Over 30% of discussions are unproductive, highlighting the need for early assessment.

The framework effectively distinguishes wasteful from constructive discussions.

Abstract

Group discussions are essential for organizing every aspect of modern life, from faculty meetings to senate debates, from grant review panels to papal conclaves. While costly in terms of time and organization effort, group discussions are commonly seen as a way of reaching better decisions compared to solutions that do not require coordination between the individuals (e.g. voting)---through discussion, the sum becomes greater than the parts. However, this assumption is not irrefutable: anecdotal evidence of wasteful discussions abounds, and in our own experiments we find that over 30% of discussions are unproductive. We propose a framework for analyzing conversational dynamics in order to determine whether a given task-oriented discussion is worth having or not. We exploit conversational patterns reflecting the flow of ideas and the balance between the participants, as well as their linguistic choices. We apply this framework to conversations naturally occurring in an online collaborative world exploration game developed and deployed to support this research. Using this setting, we show that linguistic cues and conversational patterns extracted from the first 20 seconds of a team discussion are predictive of whether it will be a wasteful or a productive one.