Är vi artiga mot virtuella agenter?
Computer scienceNumerical analysisPolitenessHuman-Machine InteractionThe Media EquationCASA-paradigmVirual AgentsSystemsControlDatalogiNumerisk analysSystemKontrollArtificial intelligensArtificiell intelligensTechnology and Engineering
The CASA-paradigm, Computers Are Social Actors, was introduced in the book "TheMedia Equation" by Reeves and Nass. One of their experiments concluded that we tend to be polite to computers in the same way as we are to people. In this study I have replicated Reeves and Nass experiment but instead of a text-based interface I have used a virtual agentin order to find out if we are polite to the agents, or still to the computer. Two experimental setups was conducted. The two setups had a common first part that was carried out on onecomputer with one agent. In the first setup the same agent carried out the evaluated and half of the participants did it on the same and the other half on a new computer. In the second setup the experiment was carried out on the same computer, and half of the evaluation was made by the same agent ant the other half by a new agent. The results from experiment one shows that we are polite to the agent, not the computer. Experiment two turned out to be a bit more complicated when the results showed that those participants who got bad results, and thus negative feedback, also was less polite to that agent. More research needs to be done to get answers to theese questions, but a tentative answer is that agents areindeed social actors, if we feel hurt by an agent, we no longer feel compelled to be polite to them.