The Influence of Emotion Expression on Perceptions of Trustworthiness in Negotiation

When interacting with computer agents, people make inferences about various characteristics of these agents, such as their reliability and trustworthiness. These perceptions are significant, as they influence people's behavior towards the agents, and may foster or inhibit repeated interactions between them. In this paper we investigate whether computer agents can use the expression of emotion to influence human perceptions of trustworthiness. In particular, we study human-computer interactions within the context of a negotiation game, in which players make alternating offers to decide on how to divide a set of resources. A series of negotiation games between a human and several agents is then followed by a "trust game." In this game people have to choose one among several agents to interact with, as well as how much of their resources they will trust to it. Our results indicate that, among those agents that displayed emotion, those whose expression was in accord with their actions (strategy) during the negotiation game were generally preferred as partners in the trust game over those whose emotion expressions and actions did not mesh. Moreover, we observed that when emotion does not carry useful new information, it fails to strongly influence human decision-making behavior in a negotiation setting.