research-article

Users' perceptions of empathic dialogue cues: A data-driven approach to provide tailored empathy

Authors:

Deborah Richards,

Ayse Aysin Bilgin,

Hedieh RanjbartabarAuthors Info & Claims

IVA '18: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

Pages 35 - 42

https://doi.org/10.1145/3267851.3267857

Published: 05 November 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Understanding how and in what circumstances users respond to different verbal expressions of empathy will be important for designing Intelligent Virtual Agents able to influence the emotions and intrinsic motivations of users. We report a study to teach healthy study habits and tips involving 239 undergraduate students, 161 of which interacted with a character designed to express empathy through dialogue. We elicited participants' personality and psychological state (depression, anxiety and stress levels) and attitudes to study. In this paper we present a detailed analysis of participants' responses to specific empathic dialogue snippets designed to include one or more empathic cues to determine whether they found it helpful, stupid or empathic. We provide an example of how we have used data mining on our dataset to suggest which cues are most appropriate to which user types to enhance user models and improve agent decision-making regarding the expression of empathy.

References

[1]

T. Bickmore, A. Gruber, and R. Picard, 2005. Establishing the computer--patient working alliance in automated health behavior change interventions. Patient education and counseling 59, 1, 21--30.

[2]

T. Bickmore and D. Schulman, 2007. Practical approaches to comforting users with relational agents. In CHI'07 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems ACM, 2291--2296.

Digital Library

[3]

T. Bickmore and D. Schulman, 2009. A virtual laboratory for studying long-term relationships between humans and virtual agents. In Proc of 8th Int. Conf. on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems-Volume 1 International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, 297--304.

Digital Library

[4]

T.W. Bickmore, D. Schulman, and C.L. Sidner, 2011. A reusable framework for health counseling dialogue systems based on a behavioral medicine ontology. Journal of biomedical informatics 44, 2, 183--197.

Digital Library

[5]

Y.-C. Cheng, C.-W. Chang, and G.-D. Chen, 2008. Design an Interactive Agent by Multi-Empathic Strategies to Reduce Student's Negative Emotion. In Advanced Learning Technologies, 2008. ICALT'08. Eighth IEEE International Conference on IEEE, 330--334.

Digital Library

[6]

I. Corp, 2016. IBM SPSS statistics for windows, version 24.0. Armonk, NY: IBM Corp.

[7]

M.H. Davis, 1980. A multidimensional approach to individual differences in empathy.

[8]

M.H. Davis, 1983. Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 44, 1, 113.

[9]

C.M. de Melo and J. Gratch, 2015. Beyond Believability: Quantifying the Differences Between Real and Virtual Humans. In Intelligent Virtual Agents Springer, 109--118.

[10]

F. de Rosis, N. Novielli, V. Carofiglio, A. Cavalluzzi, and B. De Carolis, 2006. User modeling and adaptation in health promotion dialogs with an animated character. Journal of biomedical informatics 39, 5, 514--531.

Digital Library

[11]

J. Dias, W.C. Ho, T. Vogt, N. Beeckman, A. Paiva, and E. André, I Know What I Did Last Summer: Autobiographic Memory in Synthetic Characters. In Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction.

Digital Library

[12]

J. Dias, S. Mascarenhas, and A. Paiva, 2014. Fatima modular: Towards an agent architecture with a generic appraisal framework. In Emotion modeling Springer, 44--56.

[13]

L.R. Goldberg, 1999. A broad-bandwidth, public domain, personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several five-factor models. Personality psychology in Europe 7, 1, 7--28.

[14]

J. Han, J. Pei, and M. Kamber, 2011. Data mining: concepts and techniques. Elsevier.

Digital Library

[15]

J.D. Henry and J.R. Crawford, 2005. The short-form version of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21): Construct validity and normative data in a large non-clinical sample. British journal of clinical psychology 44, 2, 227--239.

[16]

R. Hogan, 1969. Development of an empathy scale. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology 33, 3, 307.

[17]

M. Hojat, 2007. Empathy in patient care: Antecedents, development, measurement, and outcomes. Springer Science & Business Media.

[18]

R. IBM_Corp, 2016. IBM SPSS Modeler for Windows, Version 18.0. IBM Corp, Armonk, NY.

[19]

W.L. Johnson and J.C. Lester, 2016. Face-to-face interaction with pedagogical agents, twenty years later. International Journal of Artificial intelligence in education 26, 1, 25--36.

[20]

J. Klein, Y. Moon, and R.W. Picard, 2002. This computer responds to user frustration:: Theory, design, and results. Interacting with Computers 14, 2, 119--140.

[21]

I. Leite, C. Martinho, A. Pereira, and A. Paiva, 2009. As time goes by: Long-term evaluation of social presence in robotic companions. In Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2009. ROMAN 2009. The 18th IEEE International Symposium on IEEE, 669--674.

[22]

S.W. McQuiggan and J.C. Lester, 2007. Modeling and evaluating empathy in embodied companion agents. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 65, 4, 348--360.

Digital Library

[23]

H. Nguyen and J. Masthoff, 2009. Designing empathic computers: the effect of multimodal empathic feedback using animated agent. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Persuasive Technology ACM, 7.

Digital Library

[24]

A. Niculescu, B. van Dijk, A. Nijholt, H. Li, and S.L. See, 2013. Making social robots more attractive: the effects of voice pitch, humor and empathy. International journal of social robotics 5, 2, 171--191.

[25]

M. Ochs, C. Pelachaud, and D. Sadek, 2008. An empathic virtual dialog agent to improve human-machine interaction. In Proc 7th Int Conf Autonomous agents and multiagent systems - Vol 1 (Estoril, Portugal2008), IFMAAS, 1402401, 89--96.

Digital Library

[26]

A. Paiva, J. Dias, D. Sobral, R. Aylett, P. Sobreperez, S. Woods, C. Zoll, and L. Hall, 2004. Caring for agents and agents that care: Building empathic relations with synthetic agents. In Proc 3rd Int. Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems-Volume 1 IEEE Computer Society, 194--201.

Digital Library

[27]

A. Paiva, J. Dias, D. Sobral, R. Aylett, S. Woods, L. Hall, and C. Zoll, 2005. Learning by feeling: Evoking empathy with synthetic characters. Applied Artificial Intelligence 19, 3-4, 235--266.

[28]

H. Prendinger and M. Ishizuka, 2005. The empathic companion: A character-based interface that addresses users'affective states. Applied Artificial Intelligence 19, 3-4, 267--285.

[29]

D. Richards, 2017. Intimately intelligent virtual agents: knowing the human beyond sensory input. In Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGCHI International Workshop on Investigating Social Interactions with Artificial Agents ACM, 39--40.

Digital Library

[30]

J. Robison, J. Rowe, S. McQuiggan, and J. Lester, 2009. Predicting User Psychological Characteristics from Interactions with Empathetic Virtual Agents. In Intelligent Virtual Agents, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 330--336.

Digital Library

[31]

S.H. Rodrigues, S.F. Mascarenhas, J. Dias, and A. Paiva, 2009. "I can feel it too!": Emergent empathic reactions between synthetic characters. In Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction and Workshops, 2009. ACII 2009. 3rd International Conference on IEEE, 1--7.

[32]

S. Rollnick and W.R. Miller, 1995. What is motivational interviewing? Behavioural and cognitive Psychotherapy 23, 4, 325--334.

Cited By

Salman SRichards DDras M(2023)Identifying Which Relational Cues Users Find Helpful to Allow Tailoring of e-Coach DialoguesMultimodal Technologies and Interaction10.3390/mti71000937:10(93)Online publication date: 2-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/mti7100093
Tsumura TYamada S(2023)Influence of agent’s self-disclosure on human empathyPLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.028395518:5(e0283955)Online publication date: 10-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283955
Tsumura TYamada S(2023)Influence of Anthropomorphic Agent on Human Empathy Through GamesIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2023.326930111(40412-40429)Online publication date: 2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3269301
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Users' perceptions of empathic dialogue cues: A data-driven approach to provide tailored empathy
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence
    1. Distributed artificial intelligence
      1. Intelligent agents

Recommendations

An Empathic Rational Dialog Agent
ACII '07: Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction

Recent research has shown that virtual agent able to express empathic emotions enhances human-machine interaction. In this paper, we present the capabilities that virtual agent should have to be empathic toward a user. Moreover, we propose a ...
An empathic virtual dialog agent to improve human-machine interaction
AAMAS '08: Proceedings of the 7th international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems - Volume 1

Recent research has shown that virtual agents expressing empathic emotions toward users have the potentiality to enhance human-machine interaction. To identify under which circumstances a virtual agent should express empathic emotions, we have analyzed ...
Empathic dialogue system based on emotions extracted from tweets
IUI '19: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces

Empathic conversations have increasingly been important for dialogue systems to improve the users' experience, and increase their engagement with the system, which is difficult for many existing monotonous systems. Existing empathic dialogue systems are ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

IVA '18: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

November 2018

381 pages

ISBN:9781450360135

DOI:10.1145/3267851

Conference Chairs:
Anton Bogdanovych
Western Sydney University
,
Deborah Richards
Macquarie University
,
Simeon Simoff
Western Sydney University
,
Program Chairs:
Catherine Pelachaud
CNRS - ISIR, Université Pierre et Marie Curie
,
Dirk Heylen
University of Twente
,
Tomas Trescak
Western Sydney University

Copyright © 2018 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Sponsors

SIGAI: ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 05 November 2018

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed limited

Conference

IVA '18

Sponsor:

SIGAI

IVA '18: International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

November 5 - 8, 2018

NSW, Sydney, Australia

Acceptance Rates

IVA '18 Paper Acceptance Rate 17 of 82 submissions, 21%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 53 of 196 submissions, 27%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

7
Total Citations
View Citations
313
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)17
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2

Reflects downloads up to 26 Sep 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Salman SRichards DDras M(2023)Identifying Which Relational Cues Users Find Helpful to Allow Tailoring of e-Coach DialoguesMultimodal Technologies and Interaction10.3390/mti71000937:10(93)Online publication date: 2-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/mti7100093
Tsumura TYamada S(2023)Influence of agent’s self-disclosure on human empathyPLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.028395518:5(e0283955)Online publication date: 10-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283955
Tsumura TYamada S(2023)Influence of Anthropomorphic Agent on Human Empathy Through GamesIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2023.326930111(40412-40429)Online publication date: 2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3269301
Tsumura TYamada S(2022)Agents facilitate one category of human empathy through task difficulty2022 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)10.1109/RO-MAN53752.2022.9900686(22-28)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN53752.2022.9900686
Loveys KHiko CSagar MZhang XBroadbent E(2022)“I felt her company”: A qualitative study on factors affecting closeness and emotional support seeking with an embodied conversational agentInternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies10.1016/j.ijhcs.2021.102771(102771)Online publication date: Jan-2022
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2021.102771
Ranjbartabar HRichards DBilgin AKutay C(2021)Do you mind if I ask?Proceedings of the 21st ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents10.1145/3472306.3478357(167-174)Online publication date: 14-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3472306.3478357
Grislin-Le Strugeon EMarcal de Oliveira KThilliez MPetit D(2021)A systematic mapping study on agent miningJournal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence10.1080/0952813X.2020.186478434:2(189-214)Online publication date: 11-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.1080/0952813X.2020.1864784

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents