The Effects of Virtual Agent Humor and Gaze Behavior on Human-Virtual Agent Proxemics

Peter Khooshabeh, Sudeep Gandhe, Cade McCall, Jonathan Gratch, Jim Blascovich, David R. Traum

Abstract: We study whether a virtual agent that delivers humor through verbal behavior can affect an individual’s proxemic behavior towards the agent. Participants interacted with a virtual agent through natural language and, in a separate task, performed an embodied interpersonal interaction task in a virtual environment. The study used minimum distance as the dependent measure. Humor generated by the virtual agent through a text chat did not have any significant effects on the proxemic task. This is likely due to the experimental constraint of only allowing participants to interact with a disembodied agent through a textual chat dialogue.