Just as an abstract causal analysis of a plaui's faults can suggest repair strategies that will eliminate those faults [6], so too, an abstract causEil account of how a problem arises in a social situation can suggest relevant advice to correct the problem. In the social world, most problems arise as results of agents' actions; the best way to fix such problems is to modify the behavior that produces the problem. The vocabulary of volition developed in this paper is proposed as an abstract level of motivational analysis useful for discriminating among strategies for changing behavior. Volitional analysis focuses on the agents involved in an action. In addition to the actor, there is often a motivator agent w h o influences the actor and sometimes a third-party agent used as a tool by the motivator. If any of these agents can be swayed, the problematic action m a y be avoided. By identifying these agents and classifying the influences working on them, volitional analysis can suggest relevant modifications. The influences most often depend on the social context that links agents and estabhshes goal-generating themes. Behavior, however, is not always directly goal-governed, and volitional analysis recognizes these exceptional cases as well.

Stories concerning multiple agents with interacting goals and plans are difficult to understand;the task can be simplified however, if a program is given sufficient knowledge of social structures. Representations of social aspects of the story may also be necessary components of a satisfactory understanding of the story; here, we consider the distinctions which must be representable to support the task of advice-giving in the social-domain.This paper elaborates on established goal taxonomies in order to capture distinctions among goals embedded in a social context;these distinctions serve both as the basis for choosing advice and as inferential shortcuts.It goes on to explore ways in which such social goals can be predicted from a detailed understanding of the conventions defining social structures linking the various agents. Social units,social-situations, and triangles are introduced as conceptual structures which organize interpersonal-themes. The goals predicted by these themes provide a focus for motivational and impact inferences which would otherwise be lacking. These and related structures also allow some direct predictions of actions, as when a social-situation provides scriptal specification of action sequences or when a contract underlying a social-unit licenses specific recourses in response to obligation failures.