Human-Artificial Agent Interaction

Artificial agents are developed on the basis of human characteristics in terms of goal orientation, interaction with their environment, continuous perception of the surroundings and a certain degree of social skills. These agents can be either virtually or physically embodied and are perceived as autonomous. We investigate how different types of artificial agents (e.g. deepfakes, virtual influencers, social robots) are perceived by humans and which fundamental factors explain the agents' intentions to use them. Current findings indicate that mind attribution, expectancy violation, emotion and cognitive load are the fundamental factors. These findings come from mixed methods studies that include neuroimaging and questionnaire data.