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Bullying behavior - including teasing, excluding children and physical violence such as pushing or hitting (Gillies-Rezo & Bosacki, 2003; Macklem, 2003) - already occurs among preschool children (Kirves & Sajaniemi, 2012). Interactive storytelling and the use of social robots are able to promote prosocial behavior and serve as a bullying intervention (Bratitsis & Ziannas, 2015; Oliveira et al., 2021). The study aims to build on these research results and contribute to the bullying awareness of preschoolers between the ages of three and six, by using the social robot Reeti and interactive storytelling. The following research questions will be asked: 1) Does interactive storytelling and embodiment through a social robot help to sensitize preschoolers to bullying? 2) Is there an interaction between interactive storytelling and embodiment through a social robot? Sources: Bratitsis, T., & Ziannas, P. (2015). From early childhood to special education: Interactive digital storytelling as a coaching approach for fostering social empathy. Procedia Computer Science, 67, 231-240. Gillies-Rezo, S., & Bosacki, S. (2003). Invisible Bruises: Kindergartners' perceptions of bullying. International Journal of Children's Spirituality, 8(2), 163-177. Kirves, L., & Sajaniemi, N. (2012). Bullying in early educational settings. Early Child Development and Care, 182(3-4), 383-400. Macklem, G. L. (2003). Bullying and teasing: Social power in children's groups. Springer. Oliveira, R., Arriaga, P., Santos, F. P., Mascarenhas, S., & Paiva, A. (2021). Towards prosocial design: A scoping review of the use of robots and virtual agents to trigger prosocial behaviour. Computers in Human Behavior, 114, 106547.

Despite the fact that mixed-cultural backgrounds become of increasing importance in our daily life, the representation of multiple cultural backgrounds in one entity is still rare in socially interactive agents (SIAs). This paper’s contribution is twofold. First, it provides a survey of research on mixed-cultured SIAs. Second, it presents a study investigating how mixed-cultural speech (in this case, non-native accent) influences how a virtual robot is perceived in terms of personality, warmth, competence and credibility. Participants with English or German respectively as their first language watched a video of a virtual robot speaking in either standard English or German-accented English. It was expected that the German-accented speech would be rated more positively by native German participants as well as elicit the German stereotypes credibility and conscientiousness for both German and English participants. Contrary to the expectations, German participants rated the virtual robot lower in terms of competence and credibility when it spoke with a German accent, whereas English participants perceived the virtual robot with a German accent as more credible compared to the version without an accent. Both the native English and native German listeners classified the virtual robot with a German accent as significantly more neurotic than the virtual robot speaking standard English. This work shows that by solely implementing a non-native accent in a virtual robot, stereotypes are partly transferred. It also shows that the implementation of a non-native accent leads to differences in the perception of the virtual robot.

Virtual environments (VEs) can evoke and support emotions, as experienced when playing emotionally arousing games. We theoretically approach the design of fear and joy evoking VEs based on a literature review of empirical studies on virtual and real environments as well as video games’ reviews and content analyses. We define thedesign spaceand identify central design elements that evoke specific positive and negative emotions. Based on that, we derive and presentguidelinesfor emotion-inducing VE design with respect todesign themes,colors and textures, andlighting configurations. To validate our guidelines in two user studies, we 1) expose participants to 360° videos of VEs designed following the individual guidelines and 2) immerse them in a neutral, positive and negative emotion-inducing VEs combining all respective guidelines in Virtual Reality. The results support our theoretically derived guidelines by revealing significant differences in terms of fear and joy induction.

Given the prevalent use of technology for human activities, the determinants of user perceptions of the credibility of technological systems must be understood. This study investigated how user perceptions of persuasive elements that are incorporated in Academic Social Networking Sites (ASNSs) influence the Perceived Credibility of these sites. Specifically, the effects of Personalization, Reduction, Tailoring, Self-Monitoring, Rehearsal, Simulation and Tunneling on Perceived Credibility are examined. An online survey was adopted to examine the research model. Partial Least Square techniques were used to assess the significance of the determinants on Perceived Credibility. Results indicate that Tailoring positively influences Perceived Credibility whereas Personalization has a negative significant effect. Implications for theoretical insights into Perceived Credibility and its determinants and design implication are discussed.

In the last decades, the Natural Language Generation (NLG) methods have been improved to generate text automatically. However, based on the literature review, there are not works on generating text for persuading people. In this paper, we propose to use the SentiGAN framework to generate messages that are classified into levels of persuasiveness. And, we run an experiment using the Microtext dataset for the training phase. Our preliminary results show 0.78 of novelty on average, and 0.57 of diversity in the generated messages.

Sufficient physical activity can prolong the ability of older adults to live independently. Community-based exercise programs can be enhanced by regularly performing exercises at home. To support such a home-based exercise program, a blended intervention was developed that combined the use of a tablet application with a personal coach. The purpose of the current study was to explore to which extent tablet engagement predicted exercise adherence and physical activity. The results show that older adults (n = 133; M = 71 years of age) that participated 6 months in a randomized controlled trial, performed at average 12 home-based exercised per week and exercised on average 3 days per week, thereby meeting WHO guidelines. They used the tablet app on average 7 times per week. Multiple linear regressions revealed that the use of the app predicted the number of exercises that were performed and the number of exercise days. We conclude that engagement with a tablet can contribute to sustained exercise behavior.

Persuasive Technologies can cause behavior change for improving child health care. However, for persuasive technology to be effective, users have to accept it. We propose a model of determinants of users’ acceptance of persuasive technologies that contains five constructs from the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), which were used as latent variables determining users’ acceptance to use a persuasive intervention for child healthcare. A structured questionnaire was validated and completed by 133 participants to assess their perceptions. Results indicate that Perceived Usefulness, Content of Intervention and Perceived Credibility can have a significant influence on Intention to Use the Intervention. The result support our proposed model of determinants of acceptance of persuasive technology. The most important conclusion of this model is that when users perceive an intervention as being credible and useful, they are most motivated to accept and adopt it.

Culture is well known to be a driving force in social cognition. Humans tend to construct their schemes and models of the world, as well as evaluate the behavior of others, based on their cultural upbringing. Although culture might not be the first factor that comes into mind when designing socially interactive agents (SIAs), there are important reasons why it should be considered. This chapter gives an extensive overview of how culture was, and can be, implemented for Socially Interactive Agents.

This experimental study evaluates the suitability of a social robot for inducing behavior change, where the robot serves as a behavior change coach. Using a simulation of the social robot Haru developed by the Honda Research Institute, this study measured the effect of the robot’s emotional expressions and behaviors on behavior change and the perceived quality of the session. The method for behavior change employed is the ‘Tiny Habits’ approach developed by (Fogg 2019), which assumes that behavior can be changed if a) the behavior to be changed is broken down into a tiny habit, b) this habit is anchored in the person’s everyday life, and c) every success is celebrated. Based on these principles, a scripted dialogue was created to coach participants in a session in which they chose a behavior they wanted to change themselves. The experiment proceeded with altogether 30 participants. In the experimental condition, the dialogue between participant and the robot simulator was interspersed with emotional expression and behaviors such as dancing, bowing and vocalizing. The control condition utilized the same setup with the robot simulator and provided participants with the same guidance, but without emotional expression. Our results reveal a positive effect of emotional behavior on most of the measured variables. Compared to the baseline, the participants in the emotional condition had a higher motivation to change their behavior, felt more confident in applying the behavior change method, confirmed that they would think differently about behavior change and rated the quality of the lesson higher.

Sufficient physical activity can prolong the ability of older adults to live independently. Community-based exercise programs can be enhanced by regularly performing exercises at home. To support such a home-based exercise program, a blended intervention was developed that combined the use of a tablet application with a personal coach. The purpose of the current study was to explore to which extent tablet engagement predicted exercise adherence and physical activity. The results show that older adults (n = 133; M = 71 years of age) that participated 6 months in a randomized controlled trial, performed at average 12 home-based exercised per week and exercised on average 3 days per week, thereby meeting WHO guidelines. They used the tablet app on average 7 times per week. Multiple linear regressions revealed that the use of the app predicted the number of exercises that were performed and the number of exercise days. We conclude that engagement with a tablet can contribute to sustained exercise behavior.