Empathic agents to reduce user frustration: The effects of varying agent characteristics

摘要

There is now growing interest in the development of computer systems which respond to users' emotion and affect. We report three small-scale studies (with a total of 42 participants), which investigate the extent to which affective agents, using strategies derived from human-human interaction, can reduce user frustration within human-computer interaction. The results confirm the previous findings of Klein et al. [Klein, J., Moon, Y., Picard, R.W., 2002. This computer responds to user frustration: theory, design and results. Interacting with Computers 142, 119-140] that such interventions can be effective. We also obtained results that suggest that embodied agents can be more effective at reducing frustration than non-embodied agents, and that female embodied agents may be more effective than male embodied agents. These results are discussed in light of the existing research literature.