Speed Dating with an Affective Virtual Agent - Developing a Testbed for Emotion Models

In earlier studies, user involvement with an embodied software agent and willingness to use that agent were partially determined by the aesthetics of the design and the moral fiber of the character. We used these empirical results to model agents that in their turn would build up affect for their users much the same way as humans do for agents. Through simulations, we tested these models for internal consistency and were successful in establishing the relationships among the factors as suggested by the earlier user studies. This paper reports on the first confrontation of our agent system with real users to check whether users recognize that our agents function in similar ways as humans do. Through a structured questionnaire, users informed us whether our agents evaluated the user's aesthetics and moral stance while building up a level of involvement with the user and a degree of willingness to interact with the user again.