Chats with Bots: Balancing Imitation and Engagement
Open accessAbstract
Advances in AI are paving the way towards more natural interactions, blurring the line between bot and human. We present findings from a two-week diary study exploring users' interactions with the chatbot Replika. In particular, we focus on how users anthropomorphize chatbots and how this influences their engagement. We find that failing to adhere to social norms and glaring signs of humanity leads to decreased engagement unless balanced appropriately.
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Knowledge about how social relationships between humans and social chatbots initiate and develop and how such relationships impact users' broader social context is missing.
“However, knowledge about how social relationships between humans and social chatbots initiate and develop and how such relationships impact users' broader social context is missing (Muresan and Pohl, 2019).”
From My Chatbot Companion - a Study of Human-Chatbot Relationships (2021) · cites this paper as Muresan and Pohl, 2019
The Discussion (page unavailable) calls for further research on long-term chatbot use and on why users converse with agents instead of people or friends. This supports a narrower knowledge gap, but the paper does not identify a gap specifically about how human–chatbot relationships initiate and develop or how they affect users’ broader social context. (LLM, conf=0.78)
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Cites
On seeing human: A three-factor theory of anthropomorphism
Epley, N., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2007) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.114.4.864 · Cited by 4,069 · cited 2× · see citing works
“People often display anthropomorphic tendencies, most notably to reduce uncertainty, seek social satisfaction and increase communication efficiency [2].”
BackgroundMachines and Mindlessness: Social Responses to Computers
Nass, C., & Moon, Y. (2000) · Journal of Social Issues · doi:10.1111/0022-4537.00153 · Cited by 4,022 · cited 3× · see citing works
“The Computers Are Social Actors paradigm further emphasizes that people treat media and computers as social actors, by conforming to social rules and expectations, “mindlessly” applying them throughout their interaction [5].”
BackgroundI'm Sorry, Dave, I'm Afraid I Can't Do That: Chatbot Perception and Expectations
Zamora, J. (2017) · Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Human Agent Interaction · doi:10.1145/3125739.3125766 · Cited by 164 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 5
- Petter Bae Brandtzaeg and Asbjørn Følstad. 2018. Chatbots: Changing User Needs and Motivations. Interactions 25, 5 (Aug. 2018), 38-43. https://doi.org/10.1145/3236669 · DOI · Paper page
- Asbjørn Følstad and Petter Bae Brandtzæg. 2017. Chatbots and the New World of HCI. Interactions 24, 4 (June 2017), 38-42. https://doi.org/10.1145/3085558 · DOI
- Mohit Jain, Pratyush Kumar, Ramachandra Kota, and Shwetak N. Patel. 2018. Evaluating and Informing the Design of Chatbots. In Proceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 895-906. https://doi.org/10.1145/3196709.3196735 · DOI · Paper page
- Kristine L Nowak and Frank Biocca. 2003. The effect of the agency and anthropomorphism on users' sense of telepresence, copresence, and social presence in virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments 12, 5 (2003), 481-494.
- Manuel Portela and Carlos Granell-Canut. 2017. A New Friend in Our Smartphone?: Observing Interactions with Chatbots in the Search of Emotional Engagement. In Proceedings of the XVIII International Conference on Human Computer Interaction (Interacción '17). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 48, 7 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3123818.3123826 · DOI
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My Chatbot Companion - a Study of Human-Chatbot Relationships
Skjuve, M., Følstad, A., Fostervold, K. I., & Brandtzaeg, P. B. (2021) · International Journal of Human-Computer Studies · doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2021.102601 · Cited by 797 · see citing works
“Its users have been found to make note of its human likeness in conversation, while at the same time reporting on the limitations of its conversational capabilities (Muresan and Pohl, 2019).”
Background
- Authors
- Muresan, A., & Pohl, H.
- Affiliations
- University of Copenhagen (DK)
- Venue
- Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2019-05-02
- Pages
- 1-6
- OpenAlex
- W2943262897
- Cited by
- 34
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 5
- FWCI
- 7.84
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- Locations
- CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA) (publishedVersion)
- Research at the University of Copenhagen (University of Copenhagen) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- European Research Council (648785)
- 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
- chatbots, Replika, anthropomorphism, human-chatbot interaction, user engagement, social norms, diary study
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