The effects of animated characters on anxiety, task performance, and evaluations of user interfaces

ABSTRACT

Animated characters are common in user interfaces, but important questions remain about whether characters work in all situations and for all users. This experiment tested the effects of different character presentations on user anxiety, task performance, and subjective evaluations of two commerce websites. There were three character conditions (no character, a character that ignored the user, and a character that closely monitored work on the website). Users were separated into two groups that had different attitudes about accepting help from others: people with control orientations that were external (users thought that other people controlled their success) and those with internal orientations (users thought they were in control). Results showed that the effects of monitoring and individual differences in thoughts about control worked as they do in real life. Users felt more anxious when characters monitored their website work and this effect was strongest for users with an external control orientation. Monitoring characters also decreased task performance, but increased trust in website content. Results are discussed in terms of design considerations that maximize the positive influence of animated agents.

REFERENCES

• 1: Aiello, J.R. & Kolb, K.3. (,1995). Electronic performance monitoring: A risk factor for workplace stress. In S. Sauter & L. Murphy (Eds.), Organizational Risk Factors for Job Stress. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
• 2: Aiello, J.R. & Svec, C.M. (1993). Computer monitoring of work performance: Extending the social facilitation framework to electronic presence. Journal of Applied Psychology, 23(7).
• 3: Gene Ball , Jack Breese, Emotion and personality in a conversational agent, Embodied conversational agents, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001
• 4: Becheiraz, P. & Thalmann, D. (1998). A behavioral animation system for autonomous actors personified by emotions. Proceedings of the 1998 Workshop on Embodied Conversational Characters.
• 5: Bond, C.F. & Titus, L.J. (1983). Social facilitation; A meta-analysis of 241 studies. Psychological Bulletin, 94(2).
• 6: Cassell, J. & Th6risson, K.R. (1999). The power of a nod and a glance: Envelope vs. emotional feedback in animated conversational agents. Applied Artificial intelligence, 13.
• 7: Cottrell, N.B. (1972). Social Facilitation. in C.G. McClintock (Ed.), Experimental Social Psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
• 8: Cottrell, N.B., Wack, D.L., Sekerak, G.J., & Rittle, R.H. (1968). Social facilitation of dominant responses by the presence of an audience and the mere presence of others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9.
• 9: Crown, D.P. & Liverant, S. (1963). Conformity under varying conditions of personal commitment. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66.
• 10: B. J. Fogg , Clifford Nass, Silicon sycophants: the effects of computers that flatter, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, v.46 n.5, p.551-561, May 1997 [doi>10.1006/ijhc.1996.0104]
• 11: Katherine Isbister , Terre Layton, Agents: what (or who) are they?, Advances in human-computer interaction (vol. 5), Ablex Publishing Corp., Norwood, NJ, 1995
• 12: Isbister, C. & Nass, C.I. (1998). Personality in conversational characters: Building better digital interaction partners using knowledge about human personality preferences and perceptions. Proceedings of the 1998 Workshop on Embodied Conversational Characters.
• 13: Lang, P.J. (1995). The emotion probe: Studies of motivation and attention. American Psychologist, 50(5).
• 14: Brenda Laurel , S. Joy Mountford, The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1990
• 15: Lee, E-J. & Nass, C.I. (1998). Does the ethnicity of a computer agent matter? An experimental comparison of human-computer interaction and computer-mediated communication. Proceedings of the 1998 Workshop on Embodied Conversational Characters.
• 16: Lefcourt, H.M. (1966). Internal versus extemal control of reinforcement: A review. Psychological Bulletin, 65(4). ,,
• 17: James C. Lester , Stuart G. Towns , Charles B. Callaway , Jennifer L. Voerman , Patrick J. FitzGerald, Deictic and emotive communication in animated pedagogical agents, Embodied conversational agents, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001
• 18: Martin, S.A. & Knight, J.M. (1986). Social facilitation effects resulting from locus of control using humans and computer experimenters. Computers in Human Behavior, 1.
• 19: Massaro, D.W. (1998). Perceiving Talking Faces: From Speech Perception to a Behavioral Principle. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• 20: Nass, C. & Gong, L. (in press). Maximized modality or constrained consistency? Proceedings of the AVSP 99 Conference, Santa Cruz, CA.
• 21: Clifford I. Nass , Youngme Moon , John Morkes , Eun-Young Kim , B. J. Fogg, Computers are social actors: a review of current research, Human values and the design of computer technology, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford, CA, 1997
• 22: Clifford Nass , B. J. Fogg , Youngme Moon, Can computers be teammates?, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, v.45 n.6, p.669-678, Dec. 1996 [doi>10.1006/ijhc.1996.0073]
• 23: Clifford Nass , Youngme Moon , B. J. Fogg , Byron Reeves , D. Christopher Dryer, Can computer personalities be human personalities?, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, v.43 n.2, p.223-239, Aug. 1995 [doi>10.1006/ijhc.1995.1042]
• 24: Clifford Nass , Jonathan Steuer , Ellen R. Tauber, Computers are social actors, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: celebrating interdependence, p.72-78, April 24-28, 1994, Boston, Massachusetts, United States [doi>10.1145/191666.191703]
• 25: Pines, H.A. (1973). An attributional analysis of locus of control orientation and source of informational dependence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 26(2).
• 26: Byron Reeves , Clifford Nass, The media equation: how people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 1996
• 27: Rotter, J.B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external locus of control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied 80(1).
• 28: Spielberger, C.D., Gorsuch, R.L., & Lushene, R.E. (1970). Manual for the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto CA.
• 29: Stanton, J.M. & Bames-Farrell, J.L. (1996). Effects of electronic performance monitoring on personal control, task satisfaction, and task performance. Journal of Applied Psychology 81 (6).
• 30: Strickland, B.R. (1965). The prediction of social action from a dimension of internal-extemal control. Journal of Social Psychology 66.
• 31: Taylor, I.C., McInnes, F.R., Love, S., Foster, J.C., & Mervyn, J. (1998). Providing animated characters with designated personality profiles. Proceedings of the 1998 Workshop on Embodied Conversational Characters.
• 32: Weiss, R.F. & Miller, F.G. (1971). The drive theory of social facilitation. Psychological Review, 78.
• 33: Zajonc, R.B. (1965). Social Facilitation. Science 149.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.1 MODELS AND PRINCIPLES

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.1 Multimedia Information Systems
          Subjects: Animations

  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS
      I.3.7 Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism
          Subjects: Animation

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors, Management, Measurement, Performance, Theory

Keywords:
animated characters, locus of control, social agents, social facilitation