Could a virtual agent be warm and competent? investigating user's impressions of agent's non-verbal behaviours

In this abstract we introduce the design of an experiment aimed at investigating how users' impressions of an embodied conversational agent are influenced by agent's non-verbal behaviour. We focus on impressions of warmth and competence, the two fundamental dimensions of social perception. Agent's gestures, arms rest poses and smile frequency are manipulated, as well as users' expectations about agent's competence. We hypothesize that user's judgments will differ according to his expectations, by following the Expectancy Violation Theory proposed by Burgoon and colleagues. We also hypothesize to replicate the results found in our previous study concerning human-human interaction, for example high frequency of smiles will elicit higher warmth and lower competence impressions compared to low frequency of smiles, while arms crossed will elicit low competence and low warmth impressions.