Avatars Versus Agents: A Meta-Analysis Quantifying the Effect of Agency on Social Influence

By Jesse Fox, Sun Joo Grace Ahn, Joris H. Janssen, Leo Yeykelis, Kathryn Y. Segovia, Jeremy N. Bailenson. Hum. Comput. Interact., 2015

305 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Social Psychology, Human-Computer Interaction

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7d3ba8a8a050409029006fe64ce14697112703b6

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Citations in the corpus

Psychological, Relational, and Emotional Effects of Self-Disclosure After Conversations With a Chatbot (2018, background): “Previous work has found that the mere perceived identity of the partner as computer or human has profound effects, even when actual identity does not (Fox et al., 2015; Lucas, Gratch, King, & Morency, 2014).”
Avatar characteristics induce users’ behavioral conformity with small-to-medium effect sizes: a meta-analysis of the proteus effect (2019, background): “The related meta-analysis that falls within our confidence interval, r = .22 (Fox et al., 2014), examined the difference between the effects of an avatar controlled by a user and those of a more traditional media agent, which is not controlled by a user, such as a non-playable character in a…”
Parasocial interactions with real and virtual influencers: The role of perceived similarity and human-likeness (2022, background): “It may be pointed out that in practice, these effects might subside to some degree once audiences become aware of a human person orchestrating the actions of the digital influ-encer (i.e. perceiving it as an avatar; for example, Fox et al., 2015; Stein and Ohler, 2017).”
An Emerging Theory of Avatar Marketing (2021, background): “Users’ perceptions and behaviors thus differ if they learn that they are interacting with an AI-backed avatar versus one controlled by a person, reflecting the different heuristics that are evoked by machine versus human counterparts (Fox et al. 2015; Go and Sundar 2019).”
Building a Stronger CASA: Extending the Computers Are Social Actors Paradigm (2020, background): “Additionally, considerable evidence suggests that humans perceive media agents differently from how they perceive humans (e.g., Blascovich et al., 2002; Fox et al., 2015; Krämer et al., 2012).”
Avatars and computer-mediated communication: a review of the definitions, uses, and effects of digital representations (2018, background): “For example, a meta-analysis revealed that people perceive representations differently when they believe representations are controlled by humans rather than computers (Fox et al., 2015).”
Almost human: Anthropomorphism increases trust resilience in cognitive agents. (2016, background): “, & Bailenson, J. N. (2014). Avatars versus agents: A meta-analysis quantifying the effect of agency on social influence. Human-Computer Interaction, 30, 37–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07370024.2014.921494 Garland, A. (Director). (2015). Ex machina [Motion picture]. United States: Universal Studio”