The Effect of an Intelligent Virtual Agent's Nonverbal Behavior with Regard to Dominance and Cooperativity

In order to design a successful human-agent-interaction, knowledge about the effects of a virtual agent’s behavior is important. Therefore, the presented study aims to investigate the effect of different nonverbal behavior on the agent’s person perception with a focus on dominance and cooperativity. An online study with 190 participants was conducted to evaluate the effect of different nonverbal behaviors. 23 nonverbal behaviors of four different experimental conditions (dominant, submissive, cooperative and non-cooperative behavior) were compared. Results emphasize that, indeed, nonverbal behavior is powerful to affect users’ person perception. Data analyses reveal symbolic gestures such as crossing the arms, stemming the hands on the hip or touching one’s neck to most effectively influence dominance perception. Regarding perceived cooperativity expressivity has the most pronounced effect.

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