Credibility of Virtual Influencers: The Role of Design Stimuli, Knowledge Cues, and User Disposition

Virtual Influencers (VIs) are digital influencers that can look and behave like human beings but project themselves as “robots”. They influence people’s attitudes and behaviors through their presence and interaction. While human-like design can lead to acceptance, additional information about machine-like description (robot) can create conflict about the influencer’s identity and lead to unfavorable social responses. Social perceptions are also subjective. In this study, we examine the influence of human-like design, knowledge cues, and user disposition on user perceptions of VI credibility. In doing so, we present a case for the substitution of human influencers by “lesser human” counterparts in the context of social media

Persuaded by the machine : The effect of virtual nonverbal cues and individual differences on compliance in economic bargaining

Receiving a touch or smile increases compliance in natural face-to-face settings. It has been unclear, however, whether a virtual agent’s touch and smile also promote compliance or whether there are individual differences in proneness to nonverbal persuasion. Utilising a multimodal virtual reality, we investigated whether touch and smile promoted compliance to a virtual agent’s requests and whether receiver’s personality modulated the effects. Compliance was measured using the ultimatum game, in which participants were asked to either reject or accept an agent’s monetary offers. Decision-making data were accompanied by offer-related cardiac responses, both of which were analyzed as a function of expression (anger, neutral, and happiness), touch (visuo-tactile, visual, no touch), and three personality traits: behavioral inhibition/activation system sensitivity (BIS/BAS) and justice sensitivity. People accepted unfair offers more often if the agents smiled or touched them. The effect of touch was more enhanced in those with low justice sensitivity and BAS, whereas facial expressions affected those with high BIS the most. Unfair offers amplified the cardiac response, but this effect was not dependent on nonverbal cues. Together, the results suggest that virtual nonverbal behaviors of virtual agents increase compliance and that there is substantial interindividual variation in proneness to persuasion.Receiving a touch or smile increases compliance in natural face-to-face settings. It has been unclear, however, whether a virtual agent's touch and smile also promote compliance or whether there are individual differences in proneness to nonverbal persuasion. Utilizing a multimodal virtual reality, we investigated whether touch and smile promoted compliance to a virtual agent's requests and whether receiver's personality modulated the effects. Compliance was measured using the ultimatum game, in which participants were asked to either reject or accept an agent's monetary offers. Decision-making data were accompanied by offer-related cardiac responses, both of which were analyzed as a function of expression (anger, neutral, and happiness), touch (visuo-tactile, visual, no touch), and three personality traits: behavioral inhibition/activation system sensitivity (BIS/BAS) and justice sensitivity. People accepted unfair offers more often if the agents smiled or touched them. The effect of touch was more enhanced in those with low justice sensitivity and BAS, whereas facial expressions affected those with high BIS the most. Unfair offers amplified the cardiac response, but this effect was not dependent on nonverbal cues. Together, the results suggest that virtual nonverbal behaviors of virtual agents increase compliance and that there is substantial interindividual variation in proneness to persuasion.Peer reviewe

Be a Miracle - Designing Conversational Agents to Influence Users’ Intention Regarding Organ Donation

The increasing need for organ donations remains a worldwide challenge as transplant waiting lists grow and donation rates persist at constant levels. The increasing popularity of conversational agents (CAs) has prompted new strategies for educating and persuading individuals to adjust their cognitive and behavioral beliefs and become donors. However, how CAs should be designed to modify uninformed users’ intention to donate remains unclear. Against this background, we conducted an online experiment (N=134) to examine the impact of a human-like CA design on users\u27 intention to become organ donors. Based on the three-factor theory of anthropomorphism and the elaboration likelihood model, we derive three theoretical mechanisms to understand the influence of a CAs human-like design on users’ intention to donate. The findings show that perceived anthropomorphism does not directly impact persuasion and empathy but is mediated via perceived usefulness to influence the intention to donate

Persuasive technologies: a systematic literature review and application to PISA

Persuasive Technologies is an expansive eld that covers various research areas including engineering and social sciences. This document summarizes current and historical models of information processing, persuasion and persuasive systems design in order to place other studies in the eld within context. The Persuasive Systems Design Model is then selected as the most recent and comprehensive model in the eld, afer which a series of sample context analyses are performed using this model. The case used for these context analyses is the PISA tool. Finally, we consider the limitations and possible future work of this literature review

A theoretical and practical approach to a persuasive agent model for change behaviour in oral care and hygiene

There is an increased use of the persuasive agent in behaviour change interventions due to the agent‘s features of sociable, reactive, autonomy, and proactive. However, many interventions have been unsuccessful, particularly in the domain of oral care. The psychological reactance has been identified as one of the major reasons for these unsuccessful behaviour change interventions. This study proposes a formal persuasive agent model that leads to psychological reactance reduction in order to achieve an improved behaviour change intervention in oral care and hygiene. Agent-based simulation methodology is adopted for the development of the proposed model. Evaluation of the model was conducted in two phases that include verification and validation. The verification process involves simulation trace and stability analysis. On the other hand, the validation was carried out using user-centred approach by developing an agent-based application based on belief-desire-intention architecture. This study contributes an agent model which is made up of interrelated cognitive and behavioural factors. Furthermore, the simulation traces provide some insights on the interactions among the identified factors in order to comprehend their roles in behaviour change intervention. The simulation result showed that as time increases, the psychological reactance decreases towards zero. Similarly, the model validation result showed that the percentage of respondents‘ who experienced psychological reactance towards behaviour change in oral care and hygiene was reduced from 100 percent to 3 percent. The contribution made in this thesis would enable agent application and behaviour change intervention designers to make scientific reasoning and predictions. Likewise, it provides a guideline for software designers on the development of agent-based applications that may not have psychological reactance

Would You Help Me Voluntarily for the Next Two Years? Evaluating Psychological Persuasion Techniques in Human-Robot Interaction. First results of an empirical investigation of the door-in-the-face technique in human-robot interaction

Human-robot communication scenarios are becoming increasingly important. In this paper, we investigate the differences between human-human and human-robot communication in the context of persuasive communication. We ran an experiment using the door-in-the-face technique in a hu-manrobot context. In our experiment, participants communicated with a robot that performed the door-in-the-face technique, in which the communicating agent asks for an "extreme" favor first and a for a small favor shortly after to increase affirmative response to the second request. Our results show a surprisingly high acceptance rate for the extreme request and a smaller acceptance rate for the small request compared to the original study of Cialdini et al., so our results differ from the classical human-human door-in-the-face experiments. This suggests that human-robot persuasive communication differs from human-human communication, which is surprising given related work. We discuss potential reasons for our observations and outline the next research steps to answer the question whether the door-in-the-face and similar persuasive techniques would be effective if applied by robots. © 2023 Copyright for this paper by its authors

Become a Lifesaver - How to Design Conversational Agents to Increase Users’ Intention to Donate Blood

Donating blood is a selfless act that impacts public welfare, potentially saving human lives. However, blood shortage is a rising worldwide issue due to increased demand. Thus, finding ways to animate and motivate potential donors to donate blood is para-mount. In this context, conversational agents (CAs) offer a promising approach to edu-cating, promoting, and achieving desired behaviors. In this paper, we conducted an online experimental study (N=303) and investigated the effect of a human-like designed CA and fear-inducing communication on users’ intention to donate. Our results show that users’ intention is driven by perceived persuasiveness rather than perceived human-ness and that fear-inducing communication does not significantly affect the intention to donate. Against this background, we provide numerous theoretical and practical impli-cations, contributing to information system literature by enhancing our understanding of how fear-inducing communication is used in CA interactions

The Implications of Psychological Research Related to Unconscious Discrimination and Implicit Bias in Proving Intentional Discrimination

Building on the psychological research and publications indicating that much discrimination is unconscious and the result of implicit bias, this Article addresses the utility of laws that prohibit intentional discrimination in addressing this recently understood form of discrimination. More specifically, does unconscious discrimination violate a statute that prohibits intentional discrimination? The Article argues that the answer is yes.Unconscious discrimination is the result of stereotyping or categorization, a cognitive mechanism used by most people to simplify the task of perceiving, processing and retaining information about people. Absent a special effort to overcome this cognitive mechanism in making decisions about people, such decisions are frequently made on the basis of the category into which the decisionmaker places the person, rather than an individualized assessment. When a decisionmaker chooses to base decisions on the category into which an individual falls, rather than an individual assessment, the decisionmaker has made an intentional choice. Thus, the argument advanced here is that the intentional decision to discriminate is made when a decisionmaker chooses to use categories rather than an individual assessment, not at the precise point where a specific decision is made. Therefore, while a specific decision to hire or fire may not be the result of intentional discrimination at the point where the decision is made, it is, nevertheless, the product of intentional discrimination because at some point the decisionmaker decided to base decisions on categories rather than an individual assessment.The Article also discusses the common proof schemes for disparate treatment claims, including the direct method, the indirect method (McDonnell-Douglas) and mixed-motive. When the direct method is properly understood to include circumstantial evidence, it becomes the dominant method of establishing intentional discrimination. The key to proving intentional discrimination is showing that the decisionmaker engages in stereotyping and a likely way to establish this is through comments made by the decisionmaker, not necessarily in the context of the challenged decision. Once it is established that the decisionmaker engages in stereotyping and has a negative view of persons in the challenger\u27s protected group, the burden of persuasion should shift to the one whose decision is being challenged to establish an affirmative defense. What constitutes an affirmative defense, and the effect of such a defense, is explained in the Article.Understanding how discrimination works, will help guide organizations that want to eliminate all discrimination, including unconscious discrimination. Once discrimination is better understood, preventive measures can be tailored to addressing the problem