Rethinking the human-agent relationship: Which social cues do interactive agents really need to have?

Abstract

This chapter discusses the potential meaning of the term social in relation to human-agent interaction. Based on the sociological theory of object-centred sociality, four aspects of sociality, namely forms of grouping, attachment, reciprocity, and reflexivity are presented and transferred to the field of human-humanoid interaction studies. Six case studies with three different types of humanoid robots are presented, in which the participants had to answer a questionnaire involving several items on these four aspects. The case studies are followed by a section on lessons learned for human-agent interaction. In this section, a social agent matrix for categorizing human-agent interaction in terms of their main sociality aspect is introduced. A reflection on this matrix and the future (social) human-agent relationship closes this chapter.