Building rapport with extraverted and introverted agents

Abstract

Psychology research reports that people tend to seek companionship with those who have a similar level of extraversion, and markers in dialogueshow the speaker’s extraversion. Work in human-computer interaction seeks to understand creating and maintaining rapport between humans and ECAs. This study examines if humans will report greater rapport when interacting with an agent with an extraversion/introversion profile similar to their own. ECAs representing an extrovert and an introvert were created by manipulating three dialogue features. Using an informal, task-oriented setting, participants interacted with one of the agents in an immersive environment. Results suggest that subjects did not report the greatest rapport when interacting with the agent most similar to their level of extraversion.