Cooperating with life-like interface agents

As computer interfaces can display more life-like qualities such as speech output and personable characters or agents, it becomes important to understand and assess users’ interaction behavior within a social interaction framework rather than only a narrower machine interaction one. We studied how the appearance of a life-like interface agent influenced people’s interaction with it, using a social interaction framework of making and keeping promises to cooperate. Participants played a social dilemma game with a human confederate via realtime video conferencing or with one of three interface agents: a person-like interface agent, a dog-like interface agent, or a cartoon dog interface agent. Technology improvements from a previous version of the human-like interface led to increased cooperation with it; participants made and kept promises to cooperate with the person-like interface agent as much as with the confederate. Dog owners also made and kept promises to dog-like interface agents. General evaluations of likability and appealingness of the interface agent did not lead people to cooperate with it. Our findings demonstrate the importance of placing user interface studies within a social interaction framework as interfaces become more social.