Cultural differences in playing repeated ultimatum game online with virtual humans

Abstract

Efficient interaction between computational agents and users in tasks such as negotiation and bargaining requires recognition and understanding of potential differences in human behavior. Cultural differences in humans bargaining behavior are the focus of this study. We investigate the dynamics of human game playing with a conversational computational agent (Virtual Human). We demonstrate that the cultural background influences their observed behavior in this task. We investigate whether the social values held by the participants from each culture can at least partially explain the observed differences in behavior. We show that it is possible to automatically identify players' cultures from their game behavior and to predict their upcoming decisions in different stages of a repeated game. We employ data collected from US and Indian participants playing repeated rounds of the Ultimatum Game online against a virtual human when low stakes are involved. Our results are comparable to the reported results of similar games played among people in laboratory conditions and with high stakes. The two cultures are different in terms of the statistics and the sequence of offers made in the game and their reported values. The findings of this study are valuable for development of culturally-sensitive computational agents for negotiation and bargaining. © 2014 IEEE.