Abstract
There is a general lack of awareness for the influence of users´ personality traits on human-agent-interaction (HAI). Numerous studies do not even consider explanatory variables like age and gender although they are easily accessible. The present study focuses on explaining the occurrence of social effects in HAI. Apart from the original manipulation of the study we assessed the users´ personality traits. Results show that participants´ personality traits influenced their subjective feeling after the interaction, as well as their evaluation of the virtual character and their actual behavior. From the various personality traits those traits which relate to persistent behavioral patterns in social contact (agreeableness, extraversion, approach avoidance, self-efficacy in monitoring others, shyness, public self-consciousness) were found to be predictive, whereas other personality traits and gender and age did not affect the evaluation. Results suggest that personality traits are better predictors for the evaluation outcome than the actual behavior of the agent as it has been manipulated in the experiment. Implications for research on and development of virtual agents are discussed.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Kassin, S.: Psychology. Prentice-Hall, Inc., USA (2003)
Heaton, A.W., Krublanski, A.W.: Person perception by introverts and extroverts under time pressure: Effects of need for closure. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 17, 161–165 (1991)
Barrett, L.F., Pietromonaco, P.R.: Accuracy of the Five-Factor Model in Predicting Perceptions of Daily Social Interactions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23, 1173–1187 (1997)
Pozo, C., Carver, C.S., Weflens, A.R., Scheier, M.F.: Social Anxiety and Social Perception: Construing Others’ Reactions to the Self. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 17, 355–362 (1991)
Nass, C., Moon, Y., Fogg, B.J., Reeves, B., Dryer, D.C.: Can computer personalities be human personalities? International Journal of Human Computer Studies 43, 223–239 (1995)
Moon, Y., Nass, C.: How “real” are computer personalities? Psychological responses to personality types in human-computer interaction. Communication Research 23, 651–674 (1996)
Isbister, K., Nass, C.: Consistency of personality in interactive characters: Verbal cues, non-verbal cues, and user characteristics. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 53(2), 251–267 (2000)
Isbister, K.: Reading personality in onscreen characters: an examination of social principles of consistency, personality match, and situational attribution applied to interaction with characters. Doctoral dissertation, Standford University (1997)
Allbeck, J., Badler, N.: Toward representing agent behaviors modified by personality and emotion. In: Workshop on Embodied Conversational Agents – Let’s specify and evaluate them! AAMAS 2002, Bologna, Italy (2002)
Pizzutilo, S., De Carolis, B., de Rosis, F.: Cooperative Interface Agents. In: Dautenhahn, K., Bond, A.H., Canamero, L., Edmonds, B. (eds.) Socially intelligent agents. Creating relationships with computers and robots, pp. 61–68. Kluwer, Norwell (2002)
André, E., Rist, T.: Controlling the Behavior of Animated Presentation Agents in the Interface: Scripting versus Instructing. AI Magazine (Special Issue on Intelligent User Interfaces) 22(4), 53–66 (2001)
Nass, C., Moon, Y., Morkes, J., Kim, E.-Y., Fogg, B.J.: Computers are social actors: A review of current research. In: Friedman, B. (ed.) Moral and ethical issues in human-computer interaction, pp. 137–162. CSLI Press, Stanford (1997)
Nass, C., Steuer, J., Tauber, E.R.: Computers are Social Actors. In: Human Factors in Computing Systems: CHI 1994 Conference Proceedings, pp. 72–78. ACM Press, New York (1994)
Reeves, B., Nass, C.I.: The media equation: How people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places. Cambridge University Press, New York (1996)
Nass, C., Moon, Y.: Machines and mindlessness: Social responses to computers. Journal of Social Issues 56(1), 81–103 (2000)
Krämer, N.C., Simons, N., Kopp, S.: The effects of an embodied conversational agent’s nonverbal behavior on user’s evaluation and behavioral mimicry. In: Pelachaud, C., Martin, J.-C., André, E., Chollet, G., Karpouzis, K., Pelé, D. (eds.) IVA 2007. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4722, pp. 238–251. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Von der Pütten, A., Krämer, N.C., Gratch, J.: Who´s there? Can a Virtual Agent Really Elicit Social Presence? In: Proceedings of the PRESENCE 2009 - The 12th Annual International Workshop on Presence, Los Angeles, USA (2009)
Hoffmann, L., Krämer, N.C., Lam-chi, A., Kopp, S.: Media Equation Revisited: Do Users Show Polite Reactions towards an Embodied Agent? In: Ruttkay, Z., Kipp, M., Nijholt, A., Vilhjálmsson, H.H. (eds.) IVA 2009. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 5773, pp. 159–165. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Pertaub, D.-P., Slater, M., Barker, C.: An experiment on fear of public speaking in virtual reality. In: Stredney, D., Westwood, J.D., Mogel, G.T., Hoffman, H.M. (eds.) Medicine meets virtual reality, pp. 372–378. IOS Press, Amsterdam (2001)
Bailenson, J.N., Blascovich, J., Beall, A.C.: Equilibrium revisited: Mutual gaze and personal space in virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 10, 583–598 (2001)
Bailenson, J.N., Blascovich, J., Beall, A.C., Loomis, J.M.: Interpersonal distance in immersive virtual environments. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 29, 1–15 (2003)
Morkes, J., Kernal, H., Nass, C.: Effects of humor in task-oriented human-computer interaction and computer mediated communication: A direct test of SRCT theory. Human-Computer Interaction 14(4), 395–435 (2000)
Rossen, B., Johnson, K., Deladisma, A., Lind, S., Lok, B.: Virtual humans elicit skin-tone bias consistent with real-world skin-tone biases. In: Prendinger, H., Lester, J.C., Ishizuka, M. (eds.) IVA 2008. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 5208, pp. 237–244. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Von der Pütten, A.M., Krämer, N.C., Gratch, J., Kang, S.: It doesn’t matter what you are! - Explaining social effects of agents and avatars. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the International Communication Association 2010, Singapore, Singapore (2010)
Krämer, N.C.: Soziale Wirkungen virtueller Helfer. Gestaltung und Evaluation von Mensch-Computer-Interaktionen. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart (2008)
Kang, S.-H., Gratch, J., Wang, N., Watts, J.: Does Contingency of Agents’ Nonverbal Feedback Affect Users’ Social Anxiety? In: Proceedings of the 7th international joint conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems, pp. 120–127. International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, Estoril (2008)
Kang, S.-H., Gratch, J., Wang, N., Watts, J.H.: Agreeable people like agreeable virtual humans. In: Prendinger, H., Lester, J.C., Ishizuka, M. (eds.) IVA 2008. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 5208, pp. 253–261. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Bickmore, T., Cassell, J.: Social Dialogue with Embodied Conversational Agents. In: van Kuppevelt, J., Dybkjaer, L., Bernsen, N. (eds.) Natural, Intelligent and Effective Interaction with Multimodal Dialogue Systems, Kluwer Academic, New York (2004)
Bickmore, T., Gruber, A., Picard, R.: Establishing the computer-patient working alliance in automated health behavior change interventions. Patient Education Counseling 59(1), 21–30 (2005)
Yee, N., Harris, H., Jabon, M., Bailenson, J.N.: The Expression of Personality in Virtual Worlds. Social Psychology and Personality Science (in press, 2010)
Gratch, J., Okhmatovskaia, A., Lamothe, F., Marsella, S.C., Morales, M., van der Werf, R.J., Morency, L.-P.: Virtual rapport. In: Gratch, J., Young, M., Aylett, R.S., Ballin, D., Olivier, P. (eds.) IVA 2006. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 4133, pp. 14–27. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Benet-Martinéz, V., John, O.P.: Los Cinco Grandes Across Cultures and Ethnic Groups: Multitrait Multimethod Analyses of the Big Five in Spanish and English. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75(3), 729–750 (1998)
Burgoon, J.K.: Unwillingness-to-Communicate Scale: Development and Validation. Communication Monographs 43, 60–69 (1976)
Cheek, J.: The Revised Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale (RCBS). Wellesley College, Wellesley (1983)
Scheier, M.F., Carver, C.: The Self-Consciousness Scale: A Revised Version for Use with General Populations. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 15(8), 687–699 (1985)
Lennox, R., Wolfe, R.: Revision of the self-monitoring scale. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 46, 1349–1364 (1984)
Watson, D., Tellegen, A., Clark, L.A.: Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scale. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54, 1063–1070 (1988)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
von der Pütten, A.M., Krämer, N.C., Gratch, J. (2010). How Our Personality Shapes Our Interactions with Virtual Characters - Implications for Research and Development. In: Allbeck, J., Badler, N., Bickmore, T., Pelachaud, C., Safonova, A. (eds) Intelligent Virtual Agents. IVA 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6356. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15892-6_23
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15892-6_23
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-15891-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-15892-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)