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Using an Interactive Avatar's Facial Expressiveness to Increase Persuasiveness and Socialness

Published: 18 April 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Research indicates that the facial expressions of animated characters and agents can influence people's perceptions and interactions with these entities. We designed an experiment to examine how an interactive animated avatar's facial expressiveness influences dyadic conversations between adults and the avatar. We animated the avatar in realtime using the tracked facial motion of a confederate. To adjust facial expressiveness, we damped and exaggerated the avatar's facial motion. We found that ratings of the avatar's extroversion were positively related to its expressiveness. However, impressions of the avatar's realism and naturalness worsened with increased expressiveness. We also found that the confederate was more influential when she appeared as the damped or exaggerated avatar. Adjusting the expressiveness of interactive animated avatars may be a simple way to influence people's social judgments and willingness to collaborate with animated avatars. These results have implications for using avatar facial expressiveness to improve the effectiveness of avatars in various contexts. Adjusting the expressiveness of interactive animated avatars may be a simple way to influence people's social judgments and willingness to collaborate with animated avatars.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI '15: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 2015
    4290 pages
    ISBN:9781450331456
    DOI:10.1145/2702123
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    Published: 18 April 2015

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    Author Tags

    1. animated characters
    2. avatars
    3. computer-mediated communication
    4. conversation
    5. facial motion
    6. persuasiveness

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    • Eunice Kennedy Shriver Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health

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    CHI '15
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    CHI '15: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 18 - 23, 2015
    Seoul, Republic of Korea

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    CHI '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 486 of 2,120 submissions, 23%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

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    • (2023)"A feeling of déjà vu": The Effects of Avatar Appearance-Similarity on Persuasiveness in Social Virtual RealityProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36101677:CSCW2(1-31)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
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