Does an agent’s touch always matter? Study on virtual Midas touch, masculinity, social status, and compliance in Polish men

Świdrak, Justyna; Pochwatko, Grzegorz; Insabato, Andrea

doi:10.1007/s12193-020-00351-x

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…The topics of individuals' interactions with virtual agents differ depending on their gendered appearance: in studies by De Angeli and Brahnam ( 2006 ) and Brahnam and De Angeli ( 2012 ), female virtual agents received significantly more violent sexual propositions, more rape threats, more comments on their appearance, and more swear words compared to male virtual agents who received few sexual propositions, most of them targeting their girlfriends. Moreover, the degree of perceived masculinity and femininity can influence men's decisions, as shown in Świdrak et al ( 2021 ) where male participants were persuaded more by masculine agents than feminine agents, regardless of the agents' gender. Agents' appearance can influence their perceived role, as an old agent wearing a tie could be perceived more as an expert than a young agent (Shiban et al, 2015 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Female virtual agents are usually seen as less expert, less knowledgeable, and less powerful than male virtual agents (Baylor and Kim, 2004 ; Nunamaker et al, 2011 ), and they are also usually perceived as more likable and attractive than male virtual agents (Nunamaker et al, 2011 ; Lunardo et al, 2016 ). Those perception differences can even affect people's decisions (Lee, 2003 ; Świdrak et al, 2021 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…"Not only the gender of a virtual agent but even their perceived masculinity can influence participants' decisions. In a decision-making game where virtual agents made a monetary offer to male participants, the number of offers accepted was higher with the agents perceived as more masculine (Świdrak et al, 2021 ). The same results were obtained in a similar study for male participants; in contrast, female participants accepted more offers from the agents than male participants but were only influenced by the offer itself, not by the agents' perceived masculinity (Świdrak et al, 2021 ).…”

Section: Systematic Review Of Virtual Agents' Gender and Its Impact O...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Impact of Pedagogical Agents' Gender on Academic Learning: A Systematic Review

Armando

Ochs

Régner

2022

Front. Artif. Intell.

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Virtual learning environments often use virtual characters to facilitate and improve the learning process. These characters, known as pedagogical agents, can take on different roles, such as tutors or companions. Research has highlighted the importance of various characteristics of virtual agents, including their voice or non-verbal behaviors. Little attention has been paid to the gender-specific design of pedagogical agents, although gender has an important influence on the educational process. In this article, we perform an extensive review of the literature regarding the impact of the gender of pedagogical agents on academic outcomes. Based on a detailed review of 59 articles, we analyze the influence of pedagogical agents' gender on students' academic self-evaluations and achievements to answer the following questions: (1) Do students perceive virtual agents differently depending on their own gender and the gender of the agent? (2) Does the gender of pedagogical agents influence students' academic performance and self-evaluations? (3) Are there tasks or academic situations to which a male virtual agent is better suited than a female virtual agent, and vice versa, according to empirical evidence? (4) How do a virtual agent's pedagogical roles impact these results? (5) How do a virtual agent's appearance and interactive capacities impact these results? (6) Are androgynous virtual agents a potential solution to combatting gender stereotypes? This review provides important insight to researchers on how to approach gender when designing pedagogical agents in virtual learning environments.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Systematic Review Of Virtual Agents' Gender and Its Impact O...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Impact of Pedagogical Agents' Gender on Academic Learning: A Systematic Review

Armando

Ochs

Régner

2022

Front. Artif. Intell.

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“…However, their agents were very similar in appearance, which is also the case for our agents in this article. Going beyond gender, while important, the level of perceived masculinity can also play a role, as shown by Świdrak et al [39] where male participants accepted more offers from masculine agents (whatever agents' gender) in a negotiation game. In our pilot studies, participants were not asked to rate the level of agents' masculinity/femininity, which could have been interesting given the results.…”

Section: Discussion and Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a Tool Against Stereotype Threat in Math: Children's Perceptions of Virtual Role Models

Armando,

Régner,

Ochs

2023

International Cconference on Multimodal Interaction

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Users have the propensity to apply real-life gender stereotypes on virtual agents. Such stereotypes could impair users' learning in virtual environments with pedagogical agents. In particular, girls and women are negatively affected by these stereotypes in math tests. The phenomenon called Stereotype Threat refers to the fear of being negatively stereotyped in a skill area that reduces learning and performance. We wonder if virtual agents can be used to reduce Stereotype Threat effects in math. For this purpose, a virtual agent has to be perceived as a social role model. We present in this paper two pilot studies with children to explore their perception of a male agent and a female agent, both child agents, weither they can establish rapport or not. We also investigate if children apply gender stereotypes when they interact with child virtual agents, and if such agents could embody an efficient role model. Results show children found the male agent as competent as the female agent, which is usually not the case in other research involving adult participants. More importantly, the child virtual agents are perceived as social role models, opening the possibility to use them to improve children performance in STEM fields.

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Haptics in social interaction with agents and avatars in virtual reality: a systematic review

Jacucci,

Bellucci,

Ahmed

et al. 2024

Virtual Reality

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Incorporating the sense of touch through haptics in virtual spaces enables people to communicate emotions and engage in more naturalistic and meaningful social interactions. Advances in haptics and virtual reality technologies and applications have been essential to support researchers in the exploration of mediated social touch in virtual environments. The aim of this work is to review the last decade of research on haptics and virtual reality technologies investigating social touch behavior between human avatars as well as between humans and non-human virtual agents. Our systematic review organizes the variety of the conducted research in three dimensions: the context against which mediated social touch is studied, the types of haptics and virtual reality technology used, and empirical studies including data collected and outcome measures. We discuss the results of the analysis of the three dimensions and present implications for future research. We pinpoint the importance of considering in-the-wild studies and emerging issues on social virtual reality; understanding human touch perception for people with different physical and cognitive abilities, and; creating development tools to broaden the exploration of advanced technological setups.

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Does an agent’s touch always matter? Study on virtual Midas touch, masculinity, social status, and compliance in Polish men

Cited by 5 publications

References 30 publications

The Impact of Pedagogical Agents' Gender on Academic Learning: A Systematic Review

The Impact of Pedagogical Agents' Gender on Academic Learning: A Systematic Review

Toward a Tool Against Stereotype Threat in Math: Children's Perceptions of Virtual Role Models

Haptics in social interaction with agents and avatars in virtual reality: a systematic review

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