Persuasive robotic assistant for health self-management of older adults: Design and evaluation of social behaviors

Daily health self-management, such as the harmonization of food, exercise and medication, is a major problem for a large group of older adults with obesity or diabetics. Computer-based personal assistance can help to behave healthy by persuading and guiding older adults. For effective persuasion, the assistant should express social behaviors (e.g., turn taking, emotional expressions) to be trustworthy and show empathy. From the motivational interviewing method and synthetic assistants’ literature, we derived a set of social behaviors, and implemented a subset in a physical character, a virtual character and a text interface. The first behavior type concerns conversing with high-level dialogue (semantics, intentions), which could be implemented in all 3 assistants. The other behavior types could only be implemented in the characters: showing natural cues (e.g., gaze, posture), expressing emotions (e.g., compassionate face), and accommodating social conversations (e.g., turn taking). In an experiment, 24 older adults (45–65) interacted with the text interface and one of the characters, conform a “one-week diabetics scenario”. They experienced the virtual and physical character as more empathic and trustworthy than the text-based assistant, and expressed more conversational behavior with the characters. However, it seems that the preference of interacting with the character or the text interface was influenced by the conscientiousness of the participant; more conscientious people liked the text interface better. Older adults responded more negative to the characters that lacked the social behaviors than to the text interface. Some differences between the virtual and physical character probably occurred due to the specific constraints of the physical character.     

Age differences in the perception of social presence in the use of 3D virtual world for social interaction

3D virtual worlds are becoming increasingly popular as tool for social interaction, with the potential of augmenting the user’s perception of physical and social presence. Thus, this technology could be of great benefit to older people, providing home-bound older users with access to social, educational and recreational resources. However, so far there have been few studies looking into how older people engage with virtual worlds, as most research in this area focuses on younger users. In this study, an online experiment was conducted with 30 older and 30 younger users to investigate age differences in the perception of presence in the use of virtual worlds for social interaction. Overall, we found that factors such as navigation and prior experience with text messaging tools played a key role in older people’s perception of presence. Both physical and social presence was found to be linked to the quality of social interaction for users of both age groups. In addition, older people displayed proxemic behavior which was more similar to proxemic behavior in the physical world when compared to younger users.     

Gender differences in mediated communication: Women connect more than do men

Past research in gender differences in the overall Internet use has been contradictory. Some asserted men used it more than women, while others asserted there were no gender difference. Both camps concluded that men and women differed in their motivation and utilization of time spent online. The purpose of the present research was to take a contemporary look at these gender differences. Using an online survey, we asked participants about their experiences with multiple forms of mediated communication: social networking sites, e-mail, video calls, instant messaging, texting, and phone calls. Our results indicated that women, compared to men, are generally more frequent mediated communication users. Compared to men, women prefer and more frequently use text messaging, social media, and online video calls. These results suggest that the nature of mediated social interaction is changing.     

Swimming with mermaids: Communication and social density in the Second Life merfolk community

While individuals are solicited by a growing number of online networks and virtual communities, human cognitive resources are still limited in terms of the number of fruitful interactions a given individual can sustain. With a high degree of competition for attention, affiliation with the community and communication between its members are central for the survival of virtual communities. A particular virtual community could shed a new light on these phenomena. Indeed, beside the conventional communities based on human-like land-dwelling avatars, a merfolk community spontaneously emerged in the seas of the virtual world of Second Life. The fact that merfolk avatars characteristics strongly restrain their interactions with others and their ability to simultaneously join other communities obviously impacts the structuring and communication within the merfolk community. In order not to become isolated, the members have to develop optimal strategies to keep strong bonds, which in turn reinforce the immersion process. The Second Life merfolk community therefore provides an ideal model to study how members of a virtual community can compensate for ultra-specialization by increasing the quality of the internal communication processes within the community. Furthermore, the observation of the merfolk virtual community demonstrates how optimizing communication, even in a community with a wide repartition and low actual density within the virtual world, can reinforce social density.     

Planning Small Talk behavior with cultural influences for multiagent systems

There are several factors that influence communicative behavior, such as gender, personality or culture. As virtual agents interact in a more and more human-like manner, their behavior should be dependent on social factors as well. Culture is a phenomenon that affects one’s behavior without one realizing it. Behavior is thus sometimes perceived as inappropriate because there is no awareness of the cultural gap. Thus, we think cultural background should also influence the communication behavior of virtual agents. Behavioral differences are sometimes easy to recognize by humans but still hard to describe formally, to enable integration into a system that automatically generates culture-specific behavior. In our work, we focus on culture-related differences in the domain of casual Small Talk. Our model of culture-related differences in Small Talk behavior is based on findings described in the literature as well as on a video corpus that was recorded in Germany and Japan. In a validation study, we provide initial evidence that our simulation of culture-specific Small Talk with virtual agents is perceived differently by human observers. We thus implemented a system that automatically generates culture-specific Small Talk dialogs for virtual agents.     

“Turn that frown upside-down”: A contextual account of emoticon usage on different virtual platforms

Evidence highlights the prevalent usage of emoticons within digital forms of textual communication and the impact on the recipient. However, little evidence demonstrates the interpersonal functions for the user and whether this varies as a product of virtual platform. This formed the basis for the current study in which participants (N = 92) provided open-ended accounts of their reasons for using emoticons across three virtual platforms (email, text message, and social networking site), and their general emoticon usage across these. Responses revealed a number of themes on reasons for emoticon usage. The first was; “aiding personal expression”, with sub-themes of; “establishing emotional tone”; and “to lighten the mood”. Other themes were “reducing ambiguity of discourse” and “appropriateness of context”. Overall, there was consistency across platforms, on both the personal and interpersonal functions which emoticons served. However, some disparity was identified as email platforms were deemed inappropriate for emoticon use, regardless of the fact that emoticons were recognised as important emotional aids for communication. Taken together these findings highlight the importance of emoticon usage for the user, through a contextual lens to recognise the influential factors upon these behaviours and the implications this has for digital text-based communication. In this regard, this contributes further conceptualisation of one aspect of hyperpersonal communication within virtual interactions, and how different platforms may permit these self-presentational efforts to a greater or lesser extent.     

Spatial proximity to others determines how humans inhabit virtual worlds

Highly immersive three-dimensional virtual worlds have emerged as a popular medium for human social interactions. These environments enable multimodal sensory engagement and provide an immersive graphical representation of physical space where users can interact via avatars. However, when compared to two-dimensional virtual settings such as chats, virtual worlds impose constraints on social interactions due to the physical distance between individuals. Using the popular platform of Second Life as a model, we examined how humans manage this interindividual distance in virtual worlds. Taking advantage of methods developed in population ecology, we investigated how avatars are distributed in relation to each other to populate a virtual world. Our results revealed a striking dichotomy in the spatial relationships between avatars. Considerable aggregation, largely independent of population density, was observed alongside surprisingly marked physical isolation. These findings demonstrate that the spatial proximity to others determines how humans inhabit virtual worlds.     

Trick with treat – Reciprocity increases the willingness to communicate personal data

Information security is a significant challenge for information and communication technologies (ICT). This includes withstanding attempts of social engineering aimed at manipulating people into divulging confidential information. However, many users are lacking awareness of the risks involved. In a field survey that tested reciprocal behavior in social interactions, 1208 participants were asked to reveal their personal password. In line with the social norm of reciprocity, more than one third of the participants were willing to do so when they received a small incentive. Elicitation was even more successful when the incentive was given right before asking for the password. The results, including moderating factors (e.g., age, gender), are discussed in the light of security awareness of ICT users and the mechanisms of psychological persuasion.     

Internet banging: New trends in social media,gang violence,masculinity and hip hop

Gang members carry guns and twitter accounts. Media outlets nationally have reported on a new phenomenon of gang affiliates using social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to trade insults or make violence threats that lead homicide or victimization. We term this interaction internet banging. Police departments in metropolitan areas have increased resources in their gang violence units to combat this issue. Interestingly, there is little to no literature on this issue. We argue internet banging is a cultural phenomenon that has evolved from increased participation with social media and represents an adaptive structuration, or new and unintended use of existing online social media. We examine internet banging within the context of gang violence, paying close attention to the mechanisms and processes that may explain how and why internet banging has evolved. We examine the role of hip-hop in the development of internet banging and highlight the changing roles of both hip hop and computer mediated communication as social representations of life in violent communities. We explore the presentation of urban masculinity and its influence on social media behavior. Lastly, we conduct a textual analysis of music and video content that demonstrates violent responses to virtual interactions.     

Social organization in virtual settings depends on proximity to human visual aspect

Virtual environments are inherently social spaces, in which humans interact through avatars. However, the parameters which favor inter-individual social structuring in those settings are still far to be understood. Particularly, the putative influence of anthropomorphic similarity of visual aspect on social organization of avatars is a key issue to understand the cognitive processes used to form social interactions in virtual worlds. Using the highly popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft as a model of socially-active virtual setting, we analyzed the social behavior of 11,649 avatars as a function of their visual aspect. Our results show that social structuring in virtual settings depends on proximity to human visual aspect. Social groups formed by human-like avatars display more homogeneity than what the optimal use of the interface would predict, while this effect is not observed for social groups formed by non-human avatars. Thus, immersion in virtual environments depends more on visually-triggered social dynamics (role-play) than on optimal use of the interface (game-play). Furthermore, social aspect may override the immediate reward of interface optimization, thus representing a major factor of immersion in virtual environments.     

Communication in virtual world: Second life and business opportunities

Second Life is an online 3D virtual world imagined and created by its residents. The residents can communicate, explore, participate in social activities, create and trade virtual properties and services. The most common communication media used in Second Life are text, voice, instant messaging and video conferencing. The purpose of the current study is to investigate why people communicate in Second Life and opportunities of making real business value. An online survey from Second Life residents was performed to study communication behavior and business opportunities in Second Life. The theoretical backgrounds used in this study were the communication theory and social systems and word of mouth communications for consumer learning. The result was focused on the effectiveness and superiority of communication in Second Life among other social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Youtube. The communication is significant to policy makers, managers and leaders for information sharing and decision making.     

“It doesn’t matter what you are!” Explaining social effects of agents and avatars

Empirical studies have repeatedly shown that autonomous artificial entities, so-called embodied conversational agents, elicit social behavior on the part of the human interlocutor. Various theoretical approaches have tried to explain this phenomenon: According to the Threshold Model of Social Influence (Blascovich et al., 2002), the social influence of real persons who are represented by avatars will always be high, whereas the influence of an artificial entity depends on the realism of its behavior. Conversely, the Ethopoeia concept (Nass & Moon, 2000) predicts that automatic social reactions are triggered by situations as soon as they include social cues. The presented study evaluates whether participants´ belief in interacting with either an avatar (a virtual representation of a human) or an agent (autonomous virtual person) lead to different social effects. We used a 2 × 2 design with two levels of agency (agent or avatar) and two levels of behavioral realism (showing feedback behavior versus showing no behavior). We found that the belief of interacting with either an avatar or an agent barely resulted in differences with regard to the evaluation of the virtual character or behavioral reactions, whereas higher behavioral realism affected both. It is discussed to what extent the results thus support the Ethopoeia concept.     

Social anxiety and technology: Face-to-face communication versus technological communication among teens

This study examined teens’ use of socially interactive technologies (SITs), such as online social sites, cell phones/text messaging, and instant messaging (IM), and the role that social anxiety plays on how teens communicate with others (technologically or face-to-face). Participants included 280 high school students from a large western city. On average, 35–40% of teens reported using cell phones/text messaging and online social sites between 1 and 4 h daily, 24% reported using IMs 1–4 h daily and only 8% reported using email between 1 and 4 h daily. Females tended to use cell phones/text messaging and online social sites more so than did males. In assessing social anxiety, analyses revealed a positive relationship between social anxiety (not comfortable talking with others face-to-face) and (1) talking with others online and (2) talking with others via text messaging. In contrast, there was a positive relationship between the lack of social anxiety (feeling “comfortable” talking with others) and making friends online. Assessing gender differences and social anxiety also revealed significant differences. Results revealed females reported more social anxiety (not comfortable talking with others in person) than did males. In addition, females, more than males, reported feeling more comfortable using SITs (text messaging and online social sites only) rather than talking with others face-to-face.     

Make new friends or keep the old: Gender and personality differences in social networking use

The present study examined the influence of gender and personality on individuals’ use of online social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace. Participants were 238 undergraduate students who reported being members of Facebook, MySpace, or both. Based on prior research examining online behavior, we expected that gender and scores on the Big Five personality scale would moderate online social networking behavior. The results supported our predictions. Specifically, men reported using social networking sites for forming new relationships while women reported using them more for relationship maintenance. Furthermore, women low in agreeableness reported using instant messaging features of social networking sites more often than women high in agreeableness, whereas men low in openness reported playing more games on social networking sites compared to men high in openness. Overall, these results indicate the importance of examining individual differences in online behavior.     

Physical and social presence in collaborative virtual environments: Exploring age and gender differences with respect to empathy

Collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) hold the immense potential of enhancing social inclusion and social support not only in younger but especially also in older people. However, there is still considerably little knowledge about the experiences of elderly when using CVEs. Additionally, there is reason to assume that men and women regardless of their age might also differ in their perceptions of CVEs, with this difference very likely being mediated by empathic abilities. Consequently, the main objective of the current study was to evaluate gender specific experiences of social and physical presence in a group of older (N = 62) and younger adults (N = 62) with respect to possible mediating influences of empathy. Results indicate no differences in physical and social presence between the two age groups, yet they support past findings that men experience more spatial presence, involvement and a higher sense of being there than women. Also, the empathy scale Fantasy considerably mediated gender differences in spatial presence, thus strengthening the theoretical assumption of a relationship between presence and empathy. Implications and future directions of these findings are discussed in detail.     

Gender,Communication, and Self‐Presentation in Teen Chatrooms Revisited: Have Patterns Changed?

This study evaluates empirically the proposition implicit in much recent gender and CMC research that expressions of gender distinctness among teens in online environments are becoming less frequent and less traditional. Gender preferences were analyzed in linguistic features and communication styles in synchronous text messages, along with self‐presentation in user profile pictures, drawing on data from popular English‐language teen chat sites collected in 2010. Significant differences were found in speech acts, message tone, and in physical stance, dress, and social distance in profile pictures that generally conform to traditional gender stereotypes. These findings are interpreted in light of previous gender and teen CMC research, adolescent development and socialization patterns, mass media representations, and trends towards media convergence in chat platforms.     

Even in virtual environments women shop and men build: A social role perspective on Second Life

The present study examined whether traditional gender role expectations (Eagly, 1987) influence behaviors in non-traditional contexts such as online virtual environments. Participants were 352 Second Life users who reported their activities and experiences in Second Life. Results indicated that men and women differed in the types of activities they engaged in a manner predicted by social role theory. Specifically, as compared to women, men were more likely to report building things (e.g. objects), to own and work on their own virtual property, and were less likely to change their avatar’s appearance. Women, as compared to men, were more likely to meet people, shop, regularly change their avatar’s appearance, and buy clothes/objects for their avatar. The present study adds to our understanding of how traditional gender role expectations may carry over to online virtual worlds and influence online behavior.     

RU mad @ me? Social anxiety and interpretation of ambiguous text messages

Increasingly, young adults' social interactions are taking place via computer-mediated communication (CMC). Recent research suggests that socially anxious youth, in particular, may prefer interacting via CMC and show less inhibition and greater self-disclosure in such contexts. However, cognitive features of social anxiety, such as interpretation bias, have not been studied in this context. The goal of this research was to examine the phenomenon of interpretation bias (tendency to ascribe threatening interpretations to ambiguous social situations) in response to text messages. In Study 1, a new vignette measure of interpretation bias in the context of text messaging (IB-CMC) was developed and piloted with a sample of N = 215 undergraduates. This new measure displayed good psychometric properties and evidence of construct validity. For example, negative interpretation bias in CMC was associated with two established measures of interpretation bias in face-to-face situations and symptoms of social anxiety. In Study 2, the effects of sender characteristics (specifically, gender of sender) were examined in a sample of N = 353 undergraduates. Overall, participants interpreted ambiguous text messages from female senders as more negative and less benign than messages from male senders, and this effect was particularly pronounced among male participants.     

基于官方信息控制的多层网络谣言传播模型

官方信息在现实生活和虚拟网络中的扩散对谣言传播具有双重影响。本文建立多层网络传播模型研究跨境电商新政策错误解读这一谣言传播问题,模型上层为虚拟网络传播层(虚拟层),下层为现实社会传播层(现实层),个体根据各自社交网络和行为习惯接收官方信息来控制多层网络谣言传播。文章根据平均场方法分析该模型的演化过程和传播阈值,采用无标度网络进行仿真验证了理论分析传播动力学行为的正确性,结果表明,官方信息对虚拟层和社会层谣言的控制都具有积极作用,官方信息的掌握程度对社会谣言传播有显著性影响,且当官方信息的网络传播达到一定规模时,能够有效约束现实社会个体行为,进而达到虚拟层和现实层对谣言控制的同向促进作用。     

Sex differences in online selfie posting behaviors predict histrionic personality scores among men but not women

The common usage and novelty of social media is reflected in the emergence of many new psychological phenomena. Here, we explored the relationship between number of uploaded selfies (a self-portrait photograph of oneself) and individual personality differences that are likely to be related with self-promoting behavior, i.e., histrionic personality. A total of 748 people (355 women and 393 men) completed a self-assessment questionnaire on histrionic personality, self-assessed physical and interpersonal attractiveness, and reported the numbers of three types of selfies (selfies alone, selfies with a group, and selfies with a romantic partner) posted within the last month to any type of social media. We found that females posted more own and group selfies (but not selfies with a partner) than did males. Relationships between histrionic personality and the number of selfies were statistically significant only for men. We discuss our results in the context of social media related gender differences and self-presentation.