Virtual encounters, real emotions: on the Influence of Emotional Virtual Characters on Human Experience

Emotions are a crucial component of interpersonal encounters, and they are also playing an in- creasingly important role in interactions with virtual characters. These characters are appearing in more and more everyday encounters, such as in digital games, as well as in more serious contexts, including learning applications, therapy, or social media. Virtual characters appear in human-agent interaction as agents, which are computer-controlled entities, and in mediated human-human interaction as avatars, which are controlled by human users and represent them in the virtual world. This dissertation examines three perspectives on emotional virtual characters: the general ability to express recognizable emotions towards users, the effect of various emotional states in specific player-agent situations, and the consideration of two use cases of emotional virtual characters, one in a human-agent and one in a mediated human-human interaction. The results show that the mere presence of a virtual dog character evoked emotional reactions in an elderly sample (Study 1). Based on this, an emotional component was added to a virtual lion character, which displayed different recognizable emotional states that influenced the users’ emotions (Study 2). In three consecutive laboratory studies (Study 3-5), the results showed that different emotional states of a virtual agent in a game situation affected players with the respective emotions and that these emotions significantly influenced other outcome variables, such as motivation and so- cial connectedness. Lastly, the evaluation of virtual characters in the two use cases (study 6-8) showed that virtual characters can be a believable supplement; however, they can not replace hu- man encounters. Virtual characters seem to be able to represent patients well to a certain extent, but they cannot fully reach the interaction with a human being. It is precisely this perception of not being faced with a real person that seems to be an advantage, as it offers an easy way to start conversations with vulnerable young patients and to get an overview of how to structure a conversation without the risk of appearing rude to a human being. In the context of media- ted interaction between children and their imprisoned parents, the virtual representations of the two, their avatars, act as mediators of an enjoyable and highly interactive get-together that, compared to regular visits, creates the possibility of shared experiences. These are highly social and emotionally valuable, but do not replace the physical closeness that exists in a real encounter. To conclude, this dissertation’s findings contribute to the understanding that virtual characters can elicit real emotions in humans, akin to those provoked by actual human encounters. Thus, the manifestations of various emotional conditions can affect human feelings; this phenomenon can be harnessed to foster motivation in games and enhance users’ well-being. The results provide a foundation for research in the domain of interpersonal relationships, as well as for creators of virtual applications featuring virtual characters, which will become increasingly common in our daily lives due to the continued advancement of AI-supported systems.