The Art of Active Listening

This paper initiates the study of the art of listening from a social network perspective. A conversation between several people is a significant human activity. We propose a novel structure, the directed conversation hypergraph, to capture the dynamic interplay between a speaker and a listener and further explore its evolution over time. We validate our framework using drama scripts written in the Moliere format, converting them into evolving directed conversation hypergraphs. A key element of our research introduces the degree martingale for directed hypergraphs, an innovative function that helps gauge listening skills.