Designing social presence of social actors in human computer interaction

This study examines the interaction effect between user factors and media factors on feelings of social presence which are critical in the design of virtual reality systems and human computer interfaces. Both Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 show that matching synthesized voice personality to user personality positively affects users' (especially extrovert users') feelings of social presence. Experiment 2 also reveals that users feel a stronger sense of social presence when the personality of synthesized voice matches the personality of textual content than when those two are mismatched. In both experiments, extrovert voice induces a stronger sense of presence than introvert voice. These results provide strong evidence for human's automatic social responses to artificial representations possessing humanistic properties such as language and personality. Finally, we discuss various applications of these findings in the design of human computer interfaces, as well as in the study of presence.