No abstract available.

We investigated how cooperation with a computer agent was affected by the agent's pictorial realism, humanlikeness, and likability.Participants played a social dilemma game with a talking computer agent that resembled a person, a dog, or a cartoon dog, or with a confederate interacting through a video link.Participants cooperated highly with the person computer agent and with the confederate.They loved the dog and dog cartoon agents, but (excepting dog owners), significantly less with the dog agents, questionnaire results suggest likability than respect in prompting cooperation agent.

People behave differently in the presence of other people than they do when they are alone. People also may behave differently when designers introduce more human-like qualities into computer interfaces. In an experimental study we demonstrate that people's responses to a talking-face interface differ from their responses to a text-display interface. They attribute some personality traits to it; they are more aroused by it; they present themselves in a more positive light. We use theories of person perception, social facilitation, and self-presentation to predict and interpret these results. We suggest that as computer interfaces become more "human-like," people who use those interfaces may change their own personas in response to them.

We investigated subjects’ responses to a synthesized talking face displayed on a computer screen in the context of a questionnaire study. Compared to subjects who answered questions presented via text display on a screen, subjects who answered the same questions spoken by a talking face spent more time, made fewer mistakes, and wrote more comments. When we compared responses to two different talking faces, subjects who answered questions spoken by a stern face, compared to subjects who answered questions spoken by a neutral face, spent more time, made fewer mistakes, and wrote more comments. They also liked the experience and the face less. We interpret this study in the light of desires to anthropomorphize computer interfaces and suggest that incautiously adding human characteristics, like face, voice, and facial expressions, could make the experience for users worse rather than better.