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Believable Bots pp 1–28Cite as

Rethinking the Human–Agent Relationship: Which Social Cues Do Interactive Agents Really Need to Have?

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Abstract

This chapter discusses the potential meaning of the term social in relation to human–agent interaction. Based on the sociological theory of object-centred sociality, four aspects of sociality, namely forms of grouping, attachment, reciprocity, and reflexivity are presented and transferred to the field of human–humanoid interaction studies. Six case studies with three different types of humanoid robots are presented, in which the participants had to answer a questionnaire involving several items on these four aspects. The case studies are followed by a section on lessons learned for human–agent interaction. In this section, a “social agent matrix” for categorizing human–agent interaction in terms of their main sociality aspect is introduced. A reflection on this matrix and the future (social) human–agent relationship closes this chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    WordNet is an online lexical reference system, developed at Princeton University. Its design is inspired by current psycholinguistic theories of human lexical memory. English nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are organized into synonym sets, each representing one underlying lexical concept (http://wordnet.princeton.edu/).

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Acknowledgments

This work was conducted in the framework of the EU-funded FP6 project ROBOT@CWE. Moreover, the financial support by the Federal Ministry of Economy, Family and Youth and the National Foundation for Research, Technology and Development is gratefully acknowledged (Christian Doppler Laboratory for “Contextual Interfaces”).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. HCI & Usability Unit, ICT & S Center, Sigmund-Haffner Gasse 18, 5020 , Salzburg, Austria

    Astrid Weiss & Manfred Tscheligi

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  1. Astrid Weiss
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  2. Manfred Tscheligi
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Correspondence to Astrid Weiss .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , School of Computer and Security Science, Edith Cowan University, Building 13.148, 2 Bradford Street, Mount Lawley, 6050, West Australia, Australia

    Philip Hingston

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Weiss, A., Tscheligi, M. (2013). Rethinking the Human–Agent Relationship: Which Social Cues Do Interactive Agents Really Need to Have?. In: Hingston, P. (eds) Believable Bots. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32323-2_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32323-2_1

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