Are you bored?: Maybe an interface agent can help!

In this paper we present the influence of Emotive Interface Agents on task-induced boredom. We studied the effects of two agents --- friendly and unfriendly. The results show that, like human-human interaction, emotional contagion can happen between agents and users and that it can lead to reduction in task induced boredom. As expected, the friendly agent proved to be more successful in reducing boredom and maintaining participants' focus on task than the unfriendly agent. Moreover, participants felt that the friendly agent added stimulation to the task. This indicates that the friendly agent had some influence on the perception of the task. However, the effects of the unfriendly agent should not be downplayed. Even though the unfriendly agent was perceived as irritating and annoying, a majority of the participants felt that the agent masked the boredom and the monotony of performing a simple repetitive task. More surprisingly many participants found it entertaining to interact with the unfriendly agent, implying counter contagion of emotions. Given the findings of this study, we believe that agents have great potential in regulating emotions. We believe these agents can be successfully used in everyday monotonous/boring tasks such as e-form filling and data entry. With further research we also believe that agents can be extended into learning environments to assist in regulating emotions in learners.

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