Persuading users through counseling dialogue with a conversational agent

We present an empirical study of the effect of a computer agent designed to engage a user in a persuasive counseling dialogue on attitudes towards regular exercise. We used two manipulations: (1) how closely the agent simulated human conversation, using either an embodied conversational agent (ECA) or a text-only agent, and (2) whether the agent attempted to build a user-agent relationship through social dialogue. Participants demonstrated a significant increase in positive attitudes (persuasion) following the persuasive dialogue; however, this change was significantly smaller when the agent used social dialogue. Participants' perceptions of the dialogue were most positive for an ECA with social dialogue, or a text-only agent without.