Investigating effects of professional status and ethnicity i Human-Agent interaction

Abstract

We present a study involving 160 participants investigating the effect of associating professional status and ethnicity with an agent by manipulating its appearance, language, and level of education. We aim to discern perceptions of status and ethnicity with respect to participants' cultural background by inviting participants from two different cultural groups (Middle Eastern and Western) to take part in our study. Results revealed that participants' cultural background had a strong impact on their ratings of the agent and its message. However, neither the agent's portrayed status nor its ethnicity appeared to have an effect on participants' perceptions of the agent. We further found that participants from both cultural backgrounds holding a negative attitude towards robots in general tend to perceive the presented message by the agent more negatively. Middle Eastern participants had a more positive attitude towards robotic agents than Western participants, which might have been the main influence on their perception of the message presented by the agent. In addition, participants who identified the agent as a member of their own cultural group perceived the presented message more positively than those from the other cultural group. We discuss our results with an intention to inform design implications for agents in a cross-cultural context.