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The Effect of an Intelligent Virtual Agent’s Nonverbal Behavior with Regard to Dominance and Cooperativity

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Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10011))

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Abstract

In order to design a successful human-agent-interaction, knowledge about the effects of a virtual agent’s behavior is important. Therefore, the presented study aims to investigate the effect of different nonverbal behavior on the agent’s person perception with a focus on dominance and cooperativity. An online study with 190 participants was conducted to evaluate the effect of different nonverbal behaviors. 23 nonverbal behaviors of four different experimental conditions (dominant, submissive, cooperative and non-cooperative behavior) were compared. Results emphasize that, indeed, nonverbal behavior is powerful to affect users’ person perception. Data analyses reveal symbolic gestures such as crossing the arms, stemming the hands on the hip or touching one’s neck to most effectively influence dominance perception. Regarding perceived cooperativity expressivity has the most pronounced effect.

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Acknowledgements

The KOMPASS (Socially cooperative, virtual assistants as companions for people in need of cognitive support) project was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social Psychology: Media and Communication, University Duisburg-Essen, 47057, Duisburg, Germany

    Carolin Straßmann, Astrid Rosenthal von der Pütten, Raffael Kaminski & Nicole Krämer

  2. Social Cognitive Systems Group, University of Bielefeld, 33549, Bielefeld, Germany

    Ramin Yaghoubzadeh

Authors
  1. Carolin Straßmann
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  2. Astrid Rosenthal von der Pütten
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  3. Ramin Yaghoubzadeh
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  4. Raffael Kaminski
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  5. Nicole Krämer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Carolin Straßmann .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    David Traum

  2. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    William Swartout

  3. US Army Research Laboratory, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Peter Khooshabeh

  4. Universität Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

    Stefan Kopp

  5. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Stefan Scherer

  6. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Anton Leuski

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Straßmann, C., von der Pütten, A.R., Yaghoubzadeh, R., Kaminski, R., Krämer, N. (2016). The Effect of an Intelligent Virtual Agent’s Nonverbal Behavior with Regard to Dominance and Cooperativity. In: Traum, D., Swartout, W., Khooshabeh, P., Kopp, S., Scherer, S., Leuski, A. (eds) Intelligent Virtual Agents. IVA 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10011. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47665-0_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47665-0_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-47664-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-47665-0

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