Agents and Social Interaction Insights from Social Psychology

Abstract

Social interaction represents a powerful new locus of research in the quest to build more truly humanlike artificial agents. The work in this area, as in the field of human computer interaction, generally, is becoming more interdisciplinary in nature. In this spirit, the present chapter will survey concepts and theory from social psychology, a field many researchers may be unfamiliar with. Dennett’s notion of the intentional system will provide some initial grounding for the notion of social interaction, along with a brief discussion of conversational agents. The body of the chapter will then survey the areas of animal behavior and social psychology most relevant to human-agent interaction, concentrating on the areas of interpersonal relations and social perception. Within the area of social perception, the focus will be on the topics of emotion and attribution theory. Where relevant, research in the area of agent-human interaction will be discussed. The chapter will conclude with a brief survey of the use of agent-based modeling and simulation in social theory. The future looks very promising for researchers in this area; the complex problems involved in developing artificial agents who have mind-like attributes will require an interdisciplinary effort.