The media equation: how people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places
Social influence within immersive virtual environments
The social life of avatars
Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments
I hate you! Disinhibition with virtual partners
Interacting with Computers
Spatial Social Behavior in Second Life
IVA '07 Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents
Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human
Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human
A method for longitudinal behavioral data collection in second life
Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments
Human-Computer Interaction
Emotionally Responsive Robotic Avatars as Characters in Virtual Worlds
VS-GAMES '09 Proceedings of the 2009 Conference in Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications
Media Equation Revisited: Do Users Show Polite Reactions towards an Embodied Agent?
IVA '09 Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents
Deploying embodied AI into virtual worlds
Knowledge-Based Systems
The evolution of social behavior over time in second life
Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments
Second life: a social network of humans and bots
Proceedings of the 20th international workshop on Network and operating systems support for digital audio and video
"It doesn't matter what you are!" Explaining social effects of agents and avatars
Computers in Human Behavior
Scientific and Technical Information Processing
IVA'11 Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Intelligent virtual agents
Bots in our midst: communicating with automated agents in online virtual worlds
IVA'11 Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Intelligent virtual agents
The Effectiveness of Survey Recruitment Methods in Second Life
Social Science Computer Review
Supporting interoperability and presence awareness in collaborative mixed reality environments
Proceedings of the 19th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology
International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning
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We conducted an experiment to evaluate the use of embodied survey bots (i.e., software-controlled avatars) as a novel method for automated data collection in 3D virtual worlds. A bot and a human-controlled avatar carried out a survey interview within the virtual world, Second Life, asking participants about their religion. In addition to interviewer agency (bot vs. human), we tested participants' virtual age, that is, the time passed since the person behind the avatar joined Second Life, as a predictor for response rate and quality. The human interviewer achieved a higher response rate than the bot. Participants with younger avatars were more willing to disclose information about their real life than those with older avatars. Surprisingly, the human interviewer received more negative responses than the bot. Affective reactions of older avatars were also more negative than those of younger avatars. The findings provide support for the utility of bots as virtual research assistants but raise ethical questions that need to be considered carefully.