Trying too hard

Mobile services can provide users with information relevant to their current circumstances. Distant services in turn can acquire local information from people in an area of interest. Socially expressive agent behaviour has been suggested as a way to build reciprocal relationships and to increase user response to such requests. This between-subject, Wizard-of-Oz experiment aimed to investigate the potential of such behaviours. 44 participants performed a search task in an urgent context while being interrupted by a mobile agent that both provided and requested information. The socially expressive behaviour shown in this study did not increase compliance to requests; it instead reduced trust in provided information and compliance to warnings. It also negatively impacted the affective experience of users scoring lower on empathy as a personality trait. Inappropriate social expressiveness can have serious consequences; we here elaborate on the reasons for our negative results.