Who Do You Prefer? The Effect of Age, Gender and Role on Users’ First Impressions of Embodied Conversational Agents in eHealth
Open accessAbstract
Embodied conversational agents may be used to engage users in adopting eHealth applications. The aim of this research is to investigate which design features establish a positive first impression of an agent in this context. A set of eight static agent images, different in age, gender and role, were subjected to testing in an online questionnaire. Respondents (n = 155) selected their preferred design and rated the characteristics – friendliness, expertise, reliability, involvement and authority – and the likeliness of following the agent’s advice for all designs. In addition, focus groups (n = 13) were conducted for detailed understandings supporting these impressions. Our results show that, for both a general and elderly population, (1) people seem to prefer images of young, female agents over old, male agents, (2) the (a) age, (b) gender and (c) role of the agent image affect the perception of the agent’s characteristics and the likeliness of following the agent’s advice, and that (3) both the general and elderly population prefer an agent image that is similar in (a) age and (b) gender. A next step would be to investigate how the characteristics of the agent designs are perceived after interaction with the agent.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
At first glance, static images of male and older agents are seen as more authoritative than female and young agents, respectively.
“From a previous study [16], we see that at first glance, static images of male and older agents are indeed seen as more authoritative than female and young agents, respectively.”
From Embodied Conversational Agent Appearance for Health Assessment of Older Adults: Explorative Study (2020) · cites this paper as [16]
Differences found in authority are often higher compared with differences found for other characteristics.
“the study shows that the differences found in authority are often higher compared with differences found for other characteristics”
From Embodied Conversational Agent Appearance for Health Assessment of Older Adults: Explorative Study (2020) · cites this paper as [16]
In a previous study, ter Stal et al found that characteristics of older and male agents were perceived differently than characteristics of young and female agents, and that older adults seem to prefer a young female over an older male agent.
“In one study, ter Stal et al [16] identified people’s first impressions of agents varying in age, gender, and role using a zero acquaintance approach: there was no interaction involved, and participants rated static agent images at first glance. The study shows that characteristics of older and male agents were perceived differently than characteristics of young and female agents, respectively. In”
From Embodied Conversational Agent Appearance for Health Assessment of Older Adults: Explorative Study (2020) · cites this paper as [16]
Cites
Persuasive Systems Design: Key Issues, Process Model, and System Features
Oinas-Kukkonen, H., & Harjumaa, M. (2009) · Communications of the Association for Information Systems · doi:10.17705/1cais.02428 · Cited by 1,663 · see citing works
Mohr, D. C., Cuijpers, P., & Lehman, K. (2011) · Journal of Medical Internet Research · doi:10.2196/jmir.1602 · Cited by 1,097 · see citing works
Bar, M., Neta, M., & Linz, H. (2006) · Emotion · doi:10.1037/1528-3542.6.2.269 · Cited by 693 · see citing works
Taking the time to care: empowering low health literacy hospital patients with virtual nurse agents
Bickmore, T. W., Pfeifer, L. M., & Jack, B. W. (2009) · Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/1518701.1518891 · Cited by 289 · see citing works
Embodied Conversational Agent-Based Kiosk for Automated Interviewing
Nunamaker, J. F., Derrick, D. C., Elkins, A. C., Burgoon, J. K., & Patton, M. W. (2011) · Journal of Management Information Systems · doi:10.2753/mis0742-1222280102 · Cited by 280 · see citing works
Adaptive Persuasive Systems: A Study of Tailored Persuasive Text Messages to Reduce Snacking
Kaptein, M., De Ruyter, B., Markopoulos, P., & Aarts, E. (2012) · ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems · doi:10.1145/2209310.2209313 · Cited by 274 · see citing works
Designing Relational Agents as Long Term Social Companions for Older Adults
Vardoulakis, L. P., Ring, L., Barry, B., Sidner, C. L., & Bickmore, T. (2012) · Lecture Notes in Computer Science · doi:10.1007/978-3-642-33197-8_30 · Cited by 166 · see citing works
Bergmann, K., Eyssel, F., & Kopp, S. (2012) · Lecture Notes in Computer Science · doi:10.1007/978-3-642-33197-8_13 · Cited by 136 · cited 3× · see citing works
“● The agent design features – age, gender and role – affect the perception of the characteristics of a static agent image at first glance; existing research confirms this finding (Bergmann et al., 2012).”
BackgroundResultInfluentialFirst Impressions in Human--Agent Virtual Encounters
Cafaro, A., Vilhjálmsson, H. H., & Bickmore, T. (2016) · ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction · doi:10.1145/2940325 · Cited by 120 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Embodied Conversational Agent Appearance for Health Assessment of Older Adults: Explorative Study
ter Stal, S., Broekhuis, M., van Velsen, L., Hermens, H., & Tabak, M. (2020) · JMIR Human Factors · doi:10.2196/19987 · Cited by 36 · see citing works
“This study builds on previous work [16] by studying users’ impressions of agents at first glance (using the zero acquaintance approach) and after a short interaction with the agents (using the thin-slicing approach).”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialSelf-citation
- Authors
- ter Stal, S., Tabak, M., op den Akker, H., Beinema, T., & Hermens, H.
- Affiliations
- eHealth Group, Roessingh Research and Development, Enschede, The Netherlands
- Roessingh Research and Development (NL)
- Venue
- International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2019-12-16
- Volume
- 36
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 881-892
- ISSN
- 1044-7318 (ISSN-L)
- 1532-7590
- OpenAlex
- W2995151517
- Cited by
- 102
- References
- 9
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 14 · 2020: 2
- FWCI
- 9.12
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- University of Twente Research Information (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- University of Twente Research Information (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Funders
- European Commission (731656, HORIZON2020, 769553)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › AI in Service Interactions
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Keywords
- embodied conversational agents, e-health, first impressions, agent roles, user preferences, trust in agents, elderly users, human-robot interaction
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
