In the field of computational linguistics, stance detection is an established task. It is about extracting different motives behind arguments and statements. However, stances themselves often do not provide enough information about the background of a statement. What could counteract this problem is the assignment of human needs. <br>
> "Human needs are commonly used to refer to the drivers of peoples’ actions, the motives behind human behavior. Other uses of the concept include needs as instruments to achieve a certain goal and needs as societal requirements to flourish or experience a good life (Gasper, 2004). Needs as motives imply that all human actions can be understood as originating in the quest for satisfying or actualizing needs. Needs as societal requirements concern what is necessary for people to avoid serious harm and participate in their society, whether or not they are mobilized by them. Needs as requirements to achieve a certain outcome like fulfillment, happiness, or satisfaction fall in between the two last explanations. They take the elements that contribute to achieving the goal of a good life"
> "Human needs are commonly used to refer to the drivers of peoples’ actions, the motives behind human behavior. Other uses of the concept include needs as instruments to achieve a certain goal and needs as societal requirements to flourish or experience a good life (Gasper, 2004). Needs as motives imply that all human actions can be understood as originating in the quest for satisfying or actualizing needs. Needs as societal requirements concern what is necessary for people to avoid serious harm and participate in their society, whether or not they are mobilized by them. Needs as requirements to achieve a certain outcome like fulfillment, happiness, or satisfaction fall in between the two last explanations. They take the elements that contribute to achieving the goal of a good life" ~ quoted from [here](https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-94-007-0753-5_1345)
In our project we want to use the concept of human needs to better analyze text content. The human needs assignment to texts allows a detailed analysis of the motivations and human needs from which people argue. With this gained information, many aspects of text analysis can be considered in a much more detailed and profound way.
## Basis of the project
In [Paul&Frank(2019)](https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/N19-1368/) this approach is already taken up. Here, the two authors pursue the question why certain positions, opinions and views on a topic are obtained by the author. The authors see the underlying reason in the concepts of human needs. Maslow(1943) and Reiss(2004) already deal with human needs. Here Maslow sets up the so-called Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
> Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory in psychology comprising a five-tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid. From the bottom of the hierarchy upwards, the needs are: physiological (food and clothing), safety (job security), love and belonging needs (friendship), esteem, and self-actualization. ~ quoted from [here](https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html#gsc.tab=0)
Reiss takes up this pyramid of Maslow and expands it with further, more profound motifs, matching the respective categories (see picture below). <br>
Based on Maslow's pyramid and looking at the concepts from [ConceptNet](https://conceptnet.io/), we can then target the assignment and analyze and evaluate the results. By constructing subgraphs and knowledge paths for each sentence, we try to assign the best fitting human need to each sentence.
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<imgsrc="pictures/CH_maslows-hierarchy.png"/>
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[Paul&Frank(2019)](https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/N19-1368/)s approach is based on narrative texts. As dataset they use the ROCStories dataset ([Mostafazadeh, 2016]()) which contains a collection of narrative texts. We extend this approach by looking at argumentative texts and extend the procedure for our usage.
