Interactions with Artificial Entities Reloaded: 20 Years of Research from a Social Psychological Perspective

Abstract

Twenty years ago, we reflected on the potential of psychological research in the area of embodied conversational agents and systematized the variables that need to be considered in empirical studies. We gave an outlook on potential and necessary research by taking into account the independent variables behavior and appearance of the embodied agent, by referring to the dependent variables acceptance, efficiency and effects on behavior and summarizing moderating variables such as task and individual differences. Twenty years later, we now give an account on what has been found and how the field has developed – suggesting avenues for future research.