Inducing rapport-building behaviors in interaction with an embodied conversational agent

How would humans would try to build rapport with an agent rather than with another human? To address this issue, we created a virtual-reality application, Gods of the Neon City, in which an agent might (or might not) betray its human partner. The results from 45 participants suggest that it is possible to build a VR adventure with agents in which a central character can be perceived as untrustworthy, and that participants' perceptions of an agent's trustworthiness can be affected by systematic messages from other agents. However, the study's data are insufficient to demonstrate that participants try to address perceived untrustworthiness by increasing the length of their utterances.