Social responses to virtual humans: implications for future interface design

Do human-human social interactions carry over to humanvirtual human social interactions? How does this affect future interface designers? We replicated classical tests of social influence known as the social facilitation and inhibition effects. Social facilitation/inhibition theory states that when in the presence of others, people perform simple tasks better and complex tasks worse. Participants were randomly assigned to perform both simple and complex tasks alone and in the presence of either a real human, a projected virtual human, or a virtual human in a headmounted display. Our results showed participants were inhibited by the presence of others, whether real or virtual. That is, participants performed worse on the complex task, both in terms of percent correct and reaction times, when in the presence of others than when alone. Social facilitation did not occur with the real or virtual human. We discuss these results and their implications for future interface designers. Author K...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Catherine A. Zanbaka, Amy Catherine Ulinski, Paula Goolkasian, Larry F. Hodges
• Keywords: CHI 2007, Human Computer Interaction, Social, Social Facilitation, Virtual Humans