The effect of conversational agent skill on user behavior during deception

Conversational agents (CAs) are an integral component of many personal and business interactions. Many recent advancements in CA technology have attempted to make these interactions more natural and human-like. However, it is currently unclear how human-like traits in a CA impact the way users respond to questions from the CA. In some applications where CAs may be used, detecting deception is important. Design elements that make CA interactions more human-like may induce undesired strategic behaviors from human deceivers to mask their deception. To better understand this interaction, this research investigates the effect of conversational skill—that is, the ability of the CA to mimic human conversation—from CAs on behavioral indicators of deception. Our results show that cues of deception vary depending on CA conversational skill, and that increased conversational skill leads to users engaging in strategic behaviors that are detrimental to deception detection. This finding suggests that for applications in which it is desirable to detect when individuals are lying, the pursuit of more human-like interactions may be counter-productive

New Bots – The Influence of a Conversational Agent’s Rookie Personality on Users’ Satisfaction

Conversational agents (CAs) are not likely to be error-free, and efforts are being made by research and practice to mitigate the negative consequences of such errors (e.g., reduced service satisfaction). In this context, our study examines the impact of a CA\u27s rookie personality (i.e., the CA expresses that it is new and still learning) on users. Our findings reveal that the rookie personality is a double-edged sword: while it increases users\u27 perception of humanness, which increases the perception of reliability, it also directly reduces perceived reliability, resulting in less service satisfaction. To explain these seemingly contradictory effects, we turn to the dual processing theory of cognition and propose that the rookie personality influences both automatic and deliberate thinking. Users actively and consciously contemplate the CA\u27s messages, leading them to view the software artifact as broken and low-quality. Additionally, users\u27 automatic thinking is influenced by the perception of humanness