Understanding Individual Differences in Users’ Preferences and Responses to an Intelligent Virtual Advisor for Reducing Study Stress

Ranjbartabar, Hedieh; Richards, Deborah

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-22993-1_13

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 28 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Benefits can include: greater access, anonymity, personalization, consistency, patience, empathy and relationship development (Lisetti, 2012). Ranjbartabar and Richards (2019) found that utilizing an ECA can be more efficient in reducing the students' study stress than providing the same advice in a written form. ECAs may offer a COVID‐safe approach for stress management among undergraduate students.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effectiveness of embodied conversational agents for managing academic stress at an Indian University (ARU) during COVID‐19

Nelekar

Abdulrahman

Gupta

et al. 2021

Brit J Educational Tech

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effectiveness of embodied conversational agents for managing academic stress at an Indian University (ARU) during COVID‐19

Nelekar

Abdulrahman

Gupta

et al. 2021

Brit J Educational Tech

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…(2020) reported on users preferring someone from their own age or older but either having no preference for gender and ethnicity or preferring their own gender and ethnicity. Ranjbartabar and Richards (2019) sketched an even more detailed picture with users preferring similarity of the ECA in terms of age, gender and culture when the ECA takes on a supportive role. However, in case the ECA's purpose is to challenge and change biases, dissimilarity with the user is acceptable and sometimes even preferable.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, in case the ECA's purpose is to challenge and change biases, dissimilarity with the user is acceptable and sometimes even preferable. Whatever is most beneficial in achieving the goal should be implemented, as is demonstrated by Ranjbartabar and Richards (2019) . They describe an ECA representing an elderly person.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can a monologue-style ECA more effectively motivate eHealth users in initial distress than textual guidance?

Scholten

Kelders

Gemert-Pijnen

2021

Heliyon

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Stress is a prevalent issue amongst patients with chronic conditions. As eHealth interventions are gaining importance, it becomes more relevant to invoke the possibilities from the eHealth technology itself to provide motivational acts during experiences of stress as to enhance adherence to the intervention. Embodied Conversational Agents (ECA's) also known as ‘robots on screen’ can potentially provide a remedy. Within our eHealth experiment we applied a between-subjects design and experimentally studied the difference in appraisal of motivation and guidance. We deployed a functionally modest, monologue-style ECA and compared them with textual guidance. This way, we filtered out the considerable positive impact of interactive features that go along with dialogue-style ECA's. The study was carried out amongst eHealth users of which half were deliberately put in a stressful pre-condition. The rationale was two-sided; first, we hypothesized that it would induce a need for motivational support. Second, it would provide a fair representation of eHealth users in real life. Furthermore, we investigated hypothesized positive effects from a gender match between participant and ECA. The results demonstrated preferential ECA effects compared to text but only in the no stress conditions. Although our set-up controlled for user distraction by putting the facilitating ECA in a pane separate from the eHealth environment, we suspect that the enduring visual presence of the ECA during task completion had still inhibited distressed users. Discussing this phenomenon, our stance is that the hypothesis that ECA support is always superior to textual guidance is open for re-evaluation. Text may sometimes serve users equally well because it lacks human-like aspects that in stressful circumstances can become confrontational. We discuss the potential of ECA's to motivate, but also elaborate on the caveats. Further implications for the ECA, intervention adherence, and eHealth study fields are discussed in relation to stress.

show abstract

Changing users’ health behaviour intentions through an embodied conversational agent delivering explanations based on users’ beliefs and goals

Abdulrahman

Richards

Bilgin

2022

Behaviour & Information Technology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Understanding Individual Differences in Users’ Preferences and Responses to an Intelligent Virtual Advisor for Reducing Study Stress

Cited by 6 publications

References 28 publications

Effectiveness of embodied conversational agents for managing academic stress at an Indian University (ARU) during COVID‐19

Effectiveness of embodied conversational agents for managing academic stress at an Indian University (ARU) during COVID‐19

Can a monologue-style ECA more effectively motivate eHealth users in initial distress than textual guidance?

Changing users’ health behaviour intentions through an embodied conversational agent delivering explanations based on users’ beliefs and goals

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About