Heart Rate Monitoring as an Easy Way to Increase Engagement in Human-Agent Interaction

TL;DR

This study shows that displaying a virtual avatar's heartbeat synchronized with a user's actual heart rate enhances social presence and user engagement in human-agent interactions.

Contribution

It introduces an experimental protocol demonstrating that physiological similarity improves user acceptance of virtual agents.

Findings

Agents with synchronized heart rate feedback are perceived as more socially present.

Physiological similarity increases user engagement and acceptance.

The approach is feasible with widely available physiological sensors.

Abstract

Physiological sensors are gaining the attention of manufacturers and users. As denoted by devices such as smartwatches or the newly released Kinect 2 -- which can covertly measure heartbeats -- or by the popularity of smartphone apps that track heart rate during fitness activities. Soon, physiological monitoring could become widely accessible and transparent to users. We demonstrate how one could take advantage of this situation to increase users' engagement and enhance user experience in human-agent interaction. We created an experimental protocol involving embodied agents -- "virtual avatars". Those agents were displayed alongside a beating heart. We compared a condition in which this feedback was simply duplicating the heart rates of users to another condition in which it was set to an average heart rate. Results suggest a superior social presence of agents when they display feedback similar to users' internal state. This physiological "similarity-attraction" effect may lead, with little effort, to a better acceptance of agents and robots by the general public.