Importance of Considering User's Social Skills in Human-agent Interactions - Is Performing Self-adaptors Appropriate for Virtual Agents?

Self-adaptors are bodily behaviours that often involve self-touch that is regarded as taboo in public. However, self-adaptors also occur during casual conversations between friends. We developed a virtual agent that exhibits self-adaptors during conversation with users. Our continuous evaluation of the interaction between the agents that exhibit self-adaptors and without indicated that there is a dichotomy on the impression on the agents between users with high social skills and those with low skills. People with high social skills feel more friendliness toward an agent that exhibits self-adaptors than those with low social skills. The result suggests the need to tailor non-verbal behaviour of virtual agents according to user’s