Understanding Linguistic and Visual Factors that Affect Human Trust Perception of Virtual Agents

Abstract

This work investigates how visual and spoken cues of virtual agents interact to affect user perception of agent trustworthiness. It is directly motivated by practical applications, such as an assistive robot companion for the elderly or homebound, or a virtual agent that can provide psychological assessment and treatment for individuals with mental health challenges. Such technologies have the capacity to assist human users in impactful ways, but without human trust in these systems, adoption and usage will remain severely limited. Our findings reveal strong correlations between both visual and auditory features and perceived trustworthiness. This underscores the importance of incorporating a comprehensive range of nonverbal cues and auditory signals into interface design.