# Improving Humanness of Virtual Agents and Users' Cooperation through Emotions

## TL;DR

This study demonstrates that an emotion-based agent, modeled on appraisal theory, is perceived as more human-like and enhances cooperation and enjoyment in social dilemmas.

## Contribution

The paper introduces an emotion-driven agent based on appraisal theory that improves perceived humanness and cooperation in social dilemma interactions.

## Key findings

- The emotion-based agent is rated as more human-like than baseline models.
- Perception of humanness increases enjoyment in social dilemmas.
- Enhanced humanness correlates with better cooperation among participants.

## Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the performance of an agent developed according to a well-accepted appraisal theory of human emotion with respect to how it modulates play in the context of a social dilemma. We ask if the agent will be capable of generating interactions that are considered to be more human than machine-like. We conduct an experiment with 117 participants and show how participants rate our agent on dimensions of human-uniqueness (which separates humans from animals) and human-nature (which separates humans from machines). We show that our appraisal theoretic agent is perceived to be more human-like than baseline models, by significantly improving both human-nature and human-uniqueness aspects of the intelligent agent. We also show that perception of humanness positively affects enjoyment and cooperation in the social dilemma.