Name
Title | ||
|---|---|---|
When Artificial Social Agents Try to Persuade People: The Role of Social Agency on the Occurrence of Psychological Reactance |
Abstract | ||
|---|---|---|
In the near future, robotic agents might employ persuasion to influence people’s behavior or attitudes, just as human agents
do in many situations. People can comply with these requests, but, people can also experience psychological reactance, which
may lead to the complete opposite of the proposed behavior. In this study we are interested in the social nature of psychological
reactance. Social agency theory proposes that more social cues lead to a more social interaction. We argue that this also
holds for psychological reactance. Therefore, we expect a positive relationship between the level of social agency of the
source of a persuasive message and the amount of psychological reactance the message arouses. In an online experiment, participants
read an advice on how to conserve energy when using a washing machine. The advice was either provided as text-only, as text
accompanied by a still picture of a robotic agent, or as text accompanied by a short film clip of the same robotic agent.
Confirming our expectations, results indicated that participants experienced more psychological reactance when the advice
was accompanied by the still picture or when the advice was accompanied by the short film clip as compared to when the advice
was provided as text-only. This indicates that stronger social agency of the messenger can lead to more psychological reactance.
Furthermore, our results confirmed earlier research about the effects of controlling language on psychological reactance.
Implications are discussed. |
Year | DOI | Venue |
|---|---|---|
2011 | 10.1007/s12369-010-0088-1 | I. J. Social Robotics |
Keywords | Field | DocType |
Persuasive agents,Psychological reactance,Intentionality,Social influence,Energy conservation behavior | Social psychology,Social relation,Reactance,Persuasion,Social cue,Psychology,Agency (sociology),Social influence,Social nature,Social agents | Journal |
Volume | Issue | ISSN |
3 | 2 | 1875-4791 |
Citations | PageRank | References |
26 | 1.98 | 3 |
Authors | ||
3 | ||
Name | Order | Citations | PageRank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maike A. J. Roubroeks | 1 | 26 | 1.98 |
| Jaap Ham | 2 | 284 | 24.10 |
| Cees J. H. Midden | 3 | 215 | 41.38 |