Social evaluations of embodied agents and avatars |
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Authors: | Rosanna E Guadagno Kimberly R Swinth Jim Blascovich |
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Affiliation: | aDepartment of Psychology, University of Alabama, United States;bDepartment of Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, United States |
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Abstract: | The purpose of this study was to examine social evaluations (i.e., perceptions of empathy and positivity) following peoples’ interactions with digital human representations. Female research participants engaged in a 3-min interaction while immersed in a 3-D immersive virtual environment with a “peer counselor.” Participants were led to believe that the peer counselor was either an embodied agent (i.e., computer algorithm) or an avatar (i.e., another person). During the interaction, the peer counselor either smiled or not. As predicted, a digitally-rendered smile was found to affect participants’ social evaluations. However, these effects were moderated by participants’ beliefs about their interaction partner. Specifically, smiles enhanced social evaluations of embodied agents but degraded them for avatars. Although these results are consistent with other findings concerning the communicative realism of embodied agents and avatars they uniquely demonstrate that people’s beliefs alone, rather than actual differences in virtual representations, can impact social evaluations. |
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Keywords: | Social interaction Embodied agents Avatars Facial expressions Collaborative virtual environments Nonverbal behavior |
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