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The Benefits of Virtual Humans for Teaching Negotiation

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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

This article examines the potential for teaching negotiation with virtual humans. Many people find negotiations to be aversive. We conjecture that students may be more comfortable practicing negotiation skills with an agent than with another person. We test this using the Conflict Resolution Agent, a semi-automated virtual human that negotiates with people via natural language. In a between-participants design, we independently manipulated two pedagogically-relevant factors while participants engaged in repeated negotiations with the agent: perceived agency (participants either believed they were negotiating with a computer program or another person) and pedagogical feedback (participants received instructional advice or no advice between negotiations). Findings indicate that novice negotiators were more comfortable negotiating with a computer program (they self-reported more comfort and punished their opponent less often) and expended more effort on the exercise following instructional feedback (both in time spent and in self-reported effort). These findings lend support to the notion of using virtual humans to teach interpersonal skills.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Following standard practice (see [8]), wizards negotiate following a fixed script. This is to avoid the possibility of experimenter bias (e.g., if one participant seems more likeable than another). A disadvantage, however, is that all participants reach approximately the same final deal, making it difficult to judge the impact of pedagogical feedback. Thus we look at time on task and subjective effort to index if they are trying to apply the suggested advice.

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Acknowledgments

The paper benefited from the feedback of the anonymous reviewers. This research was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under grant FA9550-14-1-0364 and the U.S. Army. Statements and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the position or the policy of the United States Government, and no official endorsement should be inferred

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Creative Technologies, University of Southern California, Playa Vista, CA, USA

    Jonathan Gratch, David DeVault & Gale Lucas

Authors
  1. Jonathan Gratch
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  2. David DeVault
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  3. Gale Lucas
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jonathan Gratch .

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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Gratch, J., DeVault, D., Lucas, G. (2016). The Benefits of Virtual Humans for Teaching Negotiation. 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_25

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47665-0_25

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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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