The Impact of Linguistic and Cultural Congruity on Persuasion by Conversational Agents

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Langxuan Yin, Timothy W. Bickmore, Dharma E. Cortés

Published: 01 Jan 2010, Last Modified: 18 Oct 2025IVA 2010EveryoneRevisionsBibTeXCC BY-SA 4.0
Abstract: We present an empirical study on the impact of linguistic and cultural tailoring of a conversational agent on its ability to change user attitudes. We designed two bilingual (English and Spanish) conversational agents to resemble members of two distinct cultures (Anglo-American and Latino) and conducted the study with participants from the two corresponding populations. Our results show that cultural tailoring and participants’ personality traits have a significant interaction effect on the agent’s persuasiveness and perceived trustworthiness.