Under Pressure? - The Effect of Conversational Agents on Task Pressure and Social Relatedness in Digital Labor

Digital labor platforms (and many other digital workplaces) can be anonymous, isolated, and lacking social interaction. In this context, implementing conversational agents (CAs) to provide social presence and relatedness could be a remedy. However, based on research in the context of human-to-human interaction, two counteracting effects of CAs’ social presence can be derived. First, social presence and social relatedness induce enjoyment. Second, social presence can lead to a perception of task pressure, which reduces enjoyment. We conducted a three-condition online experiment with 269 participants from a commercial digital labor platform to investigate these effects. Our results show that social presence directly leads to social relatedness and enjoyment, and indirectly to task pressure. However, this perceived task pressure does not reduce enjoyment and only positively effects performance. Thus, it appears that introducing CAs as part of digital labor platforms is a win-win situation for users and work

Who’s Bad? – The Influence of Perceived Humanness on Users’ Intention to Complain about Conversational Agent Errors to Others

The perception of humanness in a conversational agent (CA) has been shown to strongly impact users’ processing and reaction to it. However, it is largely unclear how this perception of humanness influences users’ processing of errors and subsequent intention for negative word-of-mouth (WoM). In this context, we propose two pathways between perceived humanness and negative WoM: a cognitive pathway and an affective pathway. In a 2x2 online experiment with chatbots, we manipulated both the occurrence of errors and the degree of humanlike design. Our findings indicate that perceived humanness effects users\u27 intentions towards negative WoM through the cognitive pathway: users\u27 confirmation of expectations is increased by perceived humanness, reducing negative WoM intentions. However, it has no effect on users’ anger and frustration and does not interact with the effects of errors. For practice, our results indicate that adding humanlike design elements can be a means to reduce negative WoM

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

Follow Me If You Want to Live - Understanding the Influence of Human-Like Design on Users’ Perception and Intention to Comply with COVID-19 Education Chatbots

Following recommendations and complying with behavioral attitudes is one major key in overcoming global pandemics, such as COVID-19. As the World Health Organization (WHO) highlights, there is an increased need to follow hygiene standards to prevent infections and in reducing the risk of infections transmissions (World-Health-Organization, 2021). This urgent need offers new use cases of digital services, such as conversational agents that educate and inform individuals about relevant counter measurements. Specifically, due to the increased fatigue in the population in the context of COVID-19, (Franzen and Wöhner, 2021), CAs can play a vital role in supporting and attaining user’s behavior. We conducted an experiment (n=116) to analyze the effect of a human-like-design CA on the intention to comply. Our results show a significant impact of a human-like design on the perception of humanness, source credibility, and trust, which are all (directly or indirectly) drivers of the intention to comply

Исследование каталитической активности высокодисперсных порошков железа в синтезе Фишера-Тропша

Объектом данного исследования являлся высокодисперсный порошок железа, полученный методом электрического взрыва проводника, с последующим таблетированием под высоким давлением. Целью данной работы являлось изучение каталитической активности железного катализатора в синтезе Фишера-Тропша.The object of study is the superfine iron powder obtained by the method of electrical explosion with subsequent tableting with high pressure. The purpose of the work is to study of the catalytic activity iron catalyst in Fischer-Tropsch synthesi

ARCRAIDER I: Detailed optical and X-ray analysis of the cooling flow cluster Z3146

We present a detailed analysis of the medium redshift (z=0.2906) galaxy cluster Z3146 which is part of the ongoing ARCRAIDER project, a systematic search for gravitational arcs in massive clusters of galaxies. The analysis of Z3146 is based on deep optical wide field observations in the B, V and R bands obtained with the [email protected], and shallow archival WFPC2@HST taken with the F606W filter, which are used for strong as well as weak lensing analyses. Additionally we have used publicly available XMM/Newton observations for a detailed X-ray analysis of Z3146. Both methods, lensing and X-ray, were used to determine the dynamical state and to estimate the total mass. We also identified four gravitational arc candidates. We find this cluster to be in a relaxed state, which is confirmed by a large cooling flow with nominal ~1600M_\odot per year, regular galaxy density and light distributions and a regular shape of the weak lensing mass reconstruction. The mass content derived with the different methods agrees well within 25% at r_{200}=1661 h_{70}^{-1}kpc indicating a velocity dispersion of \sigma_v=869^{+124}_{-153}km/s.Comment: accepted by A&A; 23 pages, 28 figures, 6 tables; High resolution version can be found here: http://astro.uibk.ac.at/~w.kausch/Z3146_astroph_hires.pdf.g

Black-Hole-to-Halo Mass Relation From UNIONS Weak Lensing

This letter presents, for the first time, direct constraints on the black-hole-to-halo-mass relation using weak gravitational lensing measurements. We construct type I and type II Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) samples from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), with a mean redshift of 0.4 0.1 for type I (type II) AGNs. This sample is cross-correlated with weak lensing shear from the Ultraviolet Near Infrared Northern Survey (UNIONS). We compute the excess surface mass density of the halos associated with $36,181$ AGNs from $94,308,561$ lensed galaxies and fit the halo mass in bins of black-hole mass. We find that more massive AGNs reside in more massive halos. We see no evidence of dependence on AGN type or redshift in the black-hole-to-halo-mass relationship when systematic errors in the measured black-hole masses are included. Our results are consistent with previous measurements for non-AGN galaxies. At a fixed black-hole mass, our weak-lensing halo masses are consistent with galaxy rotation curves, but significantly lower than galaxy clustering measurements. Finally, our results are broadly consistent with state-of-the-art hydro-dynamical cosmological simulations, providing a new constraint for black-hole masses in simulations.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to ApJ

Compositional diversity of rehabilitated tropical lands supports multiple ecosystem services and buffers uncertainties

High landscape diversity is assumed to increase the number and level of ecosystem services. However, the interactions between ecosystem service provision, disturbance and landscape composition are poorly understood. Here we present a novel approach to include uncertainty in the optimization of land allocation for improving the provision of multiple ecosystem services. We refer to the rehabilitation of abandoned agricultural lands in Ecuador including two types of both afforestation and pasture rehabilitation, together with a succession option. Our results show that high compositional landscape diversity supports multiple ecosystem services (multifunction effect). This implicitly provides a buffer against uncertainty. Our work shows that active integration of uncertainty is only important when optimizing single or highly correlated ecosystem services and that the multifunction effect on landscape diversity is stronger than the uncertainty effect. This is an important insight to support a land-use planning based on ecosystem services

Compositional diversity of rehabilitated tropical lands supports multiple ecosystem services and buffers uncertainties

High landscape diversity is assumed to increase the number and level of ecosystem services. However, the interactions between ecosystem service provision, disturbance and landscape composition are poorly understood. Here we present a novel approach to include uncertainty in the optimization of land allocation for improving the provision of multiple ecosystem services. We refer to the rehabilitation of abandoned agricultural lands in Ecuador including two types of both afforestation and pasture rehabilitation, together with a succession option. Our results show that high compositional landscape diversity supports multiple ecosystem services (multifunction effect). This implicitly provides a buffer against uncertainty. Our work shows that active integration of uncertainty is only important when optimizing single or highly correlated ecosystem services and that the multifunction effect on landscape diversity is stronger than the uncertainty effect. This is an important insight to support a land-use planning based on ecosystem services