Smile and the world will smile with you-The effects of a virtual agent's smile on users' evaluation and behavior

  • Authors:

  • Nicole KräMer;Stefan Kopp;Christian Becker-Asano;Nicole Sommer

  • Affiliations:

  • University Duisburg-Essen, Social Psychology-Media and Communication, Forsthausweg 2, 47057 Duisburg, Germany;Bielefeld University, Center of Excellence, Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC), Faculty of Technology, PO Box 10 01 31, D-33501 Bielefeld, Germany;Research Group on the Foundations of Artificial Intelligence, Department of Computer Science, University of Freiburg, Georges-Köhler-Allee, Geb. 52, 79110 Freiburg, Germany;University Duisburg-Essen, Social Psychology-Media and Communication, Forsthausweg 2, 47057 Duisburg, Germany

  • Venue:
  • International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

Recent studies have demonstrated that people show social reactions when interacting with human-like virtual agents. For instance, human users behave in a socially desirable way, show increased cooperation or apply human-like communication. It has, however, so far not been tested whether users are prone to mimic the artificial agent's behavior although this is a widely cited phenomenon of human-human communication that seems to be especially indicative of the sociality of the situation. We therefore conducted an experiment, in which we analyzed whether humans reciprocate an agent's smile. In a between-subjects design, 104 participants conducted an 8-min small-talk conversation with an agent that either did not smile, showed occasional smiles, or displayed frequent smiles. Results show that although smiling did not have a distinct impact on the evaluation of the agent, the human interaction partners themselves smiled longer when the agent was smiling.