Effect of a Virtual Agent's Contingent Smile Response on Perceived Social Status

摘要

We are investigating if an agent's contingent smile during an interaction with a human participant affects the impression of the virtual character's social status. Psychological studies show lower status individuals are more likely to show contingent feedback. A "Rock-Paper-Scissors" game is used as the scenario to provide an infrastructure for an interaction between a 3D agent and a human participant. During the interaction we are using electro-myographic measurements to determine when the human participant is smiling. Immediately after a detected smiling the virtual character mimics the smile. More specifically, we are expecting that participants form the impression that the character has a low social status when the agent shows contingent smiling behavior. We are currently performing the experiment and a next step is to evaluate the system by analyzing the results.