Social Persuasion in Human-Agent Interaction

Abstract

Social persuasion abounds in human-human interactions. Our attitudes and behaviors are invariably influenced by attitudes and behaviors of other people as well as our social roles/relationships toward them. We discuss, in this paper, the design of interface agents that considers the social aspects in human-agent interaction. The underlying hypothesis of the design is that human social behaviors toward interface agents are on a par with those toward humans. We report on two preliminary experimental studies focused on the nature and the effectiveness of social persuasion in human-computer interaction environments. We argue that social factors, such as affiliation, authority and conformity, need to be taken into account in interface agent design, as they can have effective and persuasive power in human-agent interaction.