Problem Description
Conversational agents, such as text-based chatbots on Facebook Messenger or voice-based personal assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, are getting hyped as the “next big thing”. They promise a convenient and intuitive user interface to interact with technology using natural language (i.e., written or spoken).
Conversational agents often exhibit additional characteristics – called social cues – normally associated with human beings (e.g., name, gender, visual appearance, language style). These social cues have been found to affect user behavior. For example, a human-like image and a personal language style influence the extent to which people disclose their personal information in a health context (Sah & Pen 2015).
However, literature on conversational agents is very fragmented, with many studies exploring different social cues as well as different types of disclosure behavior (e.g., self / information disclosure). Therefore, a clear understanding of the effect of social cues on users’ disclosure behavior to a conversational agent is lacking.
Goal of the Thesis
The main goal of this thesis is to conduct a structured literature review on social cues and user disclosure behavior to conversational agents. Different social cues, types of disclosure behavior, and different classes of conversational agents (e.g., chatbots, voice assistants) should be covered.
Skills Required
- Interest in human-computer interaction, chatbots and conversational agents
- Very good organizational and time management skills
- Good English skills
Contact
References & Starting Literature
- Dale, R. (2016) The return of the chatbots Natural Language Engineering, 22, 811–817.
- Følstad, A. & Brandtzæg, P. B. (2017) Chatbots and the new world of HCI Interactions, 24, 38–42.
- Sah, Y. J. & Peng, W. (2015) Effects of visual and linguistic anthropomorphic cues on social perception, self-awareness, and information disclosure in a health website Computers in Human Behavior, 45, 392–401.
- Schuetzler, R., Giboney, J. S., Grimes, G. M., & Nunamaker, J. F. (2018) The influence of conversational agent embodiment and conversational relevance on socially desirable responding Decision Support Systems, 9, 283–292.
