The Effect of a Buyer Agent’s Emotions on a Human Seller

Abstract

This talk describes an experiment that develops an understanding of the interactions between humans and computer agents. Prior research on humans interactions with simulated computer emotions indicate a bias by humans on how they engage the computer in a negotiation when they know it’s a computer. When presented with the possibility that they are buying from a human, they exhibit different behaviours. This experiment examines reactions of people selling a product to a computer agent. The participants in this study are part of a selling and negotiation simulation where they are selling a car to the agent. Previous studies indicate that humans respond to the emotions of the computer agent as they would to an average human. That is, the seller concedes faster to an angry agent, and the results of this experiment agree with prior work.

*Indicates faculty mentor