\n Anthropomorphic virtual agents can serve as powerful technological mediators to impact motivational outcomes such as self-efficacy and attitude change. Such anthropomorphic agents can be designed as simulated\n social models\n in the Bandurian sense, providing social influence as virtual ‘role models’. Of particular value is the capacity for designing such agents as optimized social models for a target audience and context. Importantly, the\n visual presence\n and\n appearance\n of such agents can have a major impact on motivation and affect regardless of the underlying technical sophistication. Empirical results of different instantiations of agent presence and appearance are reviewed for both autonomous virtual agents and avatars that represent a user.\n

Use of conversational artificial intelligence (AI), such as humanlike social chatbots, is increasing. While a growing number of people is expected to engage in intimate relationships with social chatbots, theories and knowledge of human–AI friendship remain limited. As friendships with AI may alter our understanding of friendship itself, this study aims to explore the meaning of human–AI friendship through a developed conceptual framework. We conducted 19 in-depth interviews with people who have a human–AI friendship with the social chatbot Replika to uncover how they understand and perceive this friendship and how it compares to human friendship. Our results indicate that while human–AI friendship may be understood in similar ways to human–human friendship, the artificial nature of the chatbot also alters the notion of friendship in multiple ways, such as allowing for a more personalized friendship tailored to the user’s needs.

This paper answers the question, “Why do organizations process information?” Uncertainty and equivocality are defined as two forces that influence information processing in organizations. Organization structure and internal systems determine both the amount and richness of information provided to managers. Models are proposed that show how organizations can be designed to meet the information needs of technology, interdepartmental relations, and the environment. One implication for managers is that a major problem is lack of clarity, not lack of data. The models indicate how organizations can be designed to provide information mechanisms to both reduce uncertainty and resolve equivocality.

Anthropomorphism describes the tendency to imbue the real or imagined behavior of nonhuman agents with humanlike characteristics, motivations, intentions, or emotions. Although surprisingly common, anthropomorphism is not invariant. This article describes a theory to explain when people are likely to anthropomorphize and when they are not, focused on three psychological determinants--the accessibility and applicability of anthropocentric knowledge (elicited agent knowledge), the motivation to explain and understand the behavior of other agents (effectance motivation), and the desire for social contact and affiliation (sociality motivation). This theory predicts that people are more likely to anthropomorphize when anthropocentric knowledge is accessible and applicable, when motivated to be effective social agents, and when lacking a sense of social connection to other humans. These factors help to explain why anthropomorphism is so variable; organize diverse research; and offer testable predictions about dispositional, situational, developmental, and cultural influences on anthropomorphism. Discussion addresses extensions of this theory into the specific psychological processes underlying anthropomorphism, applications of this theory into robotics and human-computer interaction, and the insights offered by this theory into the inverse process of dehumanization.PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved.

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has impacted society in many aspects. Alongside this progress, concerns such as privacy violation, discriminatory bias, and safety risks have also surfaced, highlighting the need for the development of ethical, responsible, and socially beneficial AI. In response, the concept of trustworthy AI has gained prominence, and several guidelines for developing trustworthy AI have been proposed. Against this background, we demonstrate the significance of psychological research in identifying factors that contribute to the formation of trust in AI. Specifically, we review research findings on interpersonal, human-automation, and human-AI trust from the perspective of a three-dimension framework (i.e., the trustor, the trustee, and their interactive context). The framework synthesizes common factors related to trust formation and maintenance across different trust types. These factors point out the foundational requirements for building trustworthy AI and provide pivotal guidance for its development that also involves communication, education, and training for users. We conclude by discussing how the insights in trust research can help enhance AI’s trustworthiness and foster its adoption and application.

Computer-mediated communication (CMC), and specifically social media, may affect the mental health (MH) and well-being of its users, for better or worse. Research on this topic has accumulated rapidly, accompanied by controversial public debate and numerous systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Yet, a higher-level integration of the multiple disparate conceptual and operational approaches to CMC and MH and individual review findings is desperately needed. To this end, we first develop two organizing frameworks that systematize conceptual and operational approaches to CMC and MH. Based on these frameworks, we integrate the literature through a meta-review of 34 reviews and a content analysis of 594 publications. Meta-analytic evidence, overall, suggests a small negative association between social media use and MH. However, effects are complex and depend on the CMC and MH indicators investigated. Based on our conceptual review and the evidence synthesis, we devise an agenda for future research in this interdisciplinary field.

This study examined how and when a chatbot’s emotional support was effective in reducing people’s stress and worry. It compared emotional support from chatbot versus human partners in terms of its process and conditional effects on stress/worry reduction. In an online experiment, participants discussed a personal stressor with a chatbot or a human partner who provided none, or either one or both of emotional support and reciprocal self-disclosure. The results showed that emotional support from a conversational partner was mediated through perceived supportiveness of the partner to reduce stress and worry among participants, and the link from emotional support to perceived supportiveness was stronger for a human than for a chatbot. A conversational partner’s reciprocal self-disclosure enhanced the positive effect of emotional support on worry reduction. However, when emotional support was absent, a solely self-disclosing chatbot reduced even less stress than a chatbot not providing any response to participants’ stress.

To evaluate the impact of actual and perceived similarity on interpersonal attraction, we meta-analyzed 460 effect sizes from 313 laboratory and field investigations. Results indicated that the associations between interpersonal attraction and both actual similarity (r =.47) and perceived similarity (r =.39) were significant and large. The data also indicate that (i) actual similarity was important in no-interaction and short-interaction studies, (ii) there was a significant reduction in the effect size of actual similarity beyond no-interaction studies, and (iii) the effect of actual similarity in existing relationships was not significant. Alternatively, perceived similarity predicted attraction in no-interaction, short-interaction, and existing relationship studies. The implications of perceived similarity, rather than actual similarity, being predictive of attraction in existing relationships are discussed.

Media use–social capital research has studied traditional and social media use and associated social capital. Still, little is known about whether social capital would be cultivated or damaged by the use of conversational artificial intelligence (AI). This study explores the associations between conversational AI use and various measures of social capital using a territory-wide survey of an online representative sample in Hong Kong ( n = 1022). The results showed that conversational AI users ( n = 398) were more likely to have more offline and online bonding and bridging social capital, social trust, and civic participation than non-users ( n = 624). For the conversational AI users, intensity and frequency of conversational AI use were the positive predictors of the social capital measures. The findings demonstrated larger effect sizes for online bonding and bridging social capital than offline bonding and bridging social capital.

Background: Exposure therapy involves exposure to feared stimuli and is considered to be the gold-standard treatment for anxiety disorders. While its application in Virtual Reality (VR) has been very successful for phobic disorders, the effects of exposure to virtual social stimuli in Social Anxiety Disorder are heterogeneous. This difference has been linked to demands on realism and presence, particularly social presence, as a pre-requisite in evoking emotional experiences in virtual social interactions. So far, however, the influence of social presence on emotional experience in social interactions with virtual agents remains unknown.

Hypotheses involving mediation are common in the behavioral sciences. Mediation exists when a predictor affects a dependent variable indirectly through at least one intervening variable, or mediator. Methods to assess mediation involving multiple simultaneous mediators have received little attention in the methodological literature despite a clear need. We provide an overview of simple and multiple mediation and explore three approaches that can be used to investigate indirect processes, as well as methods for contrasting two or more mediators within a single model. We present an illustrative example, assessing and contrasting potential mediators of the relationship between the helpfulness of socialization agents and job satisfaction. We also provide SAS and SPSS macros, as well as Mplus and LISREL syntax, to facilitate the use of these methods in applications.

Qurniati R, Febryano IG, Zulfiani D. 2017. How trust influence social capital to support collective action in agroforestry development?. Biodiversitas 18: 1201-1206. Trust is an important factor for strengthening social capital. Trust in forest community is achieved through collective action in small scale agroforestry. It was challenging process regards the low on social capital in communities. This study intended to analyse and explain how trust influences social capital in encouraging collective action in agroforestry development. The study conducted in Sidodadi and Sumur Kumbang Lampung Province, from October-December 2016. The area was selected based on disparities of sea level of villages. The data collected through in-depth interviews with several members of farmer group who responsible for agroforestry. The research found that trust between farmer group member remains high. However, trust as a source of social capital was not supported collective action since farmer group institution is weak. Therefore, to support agroforestry development, social capital should be increased through the development of good networks (bridging) to reach collective goal i.e. community welfare and sustainable forest management

Social interactions through social commerce platforms empower consumers to share their personal experiences with others, but its role becomes more significant for societal protection during COVID-19. Numerous scholars have studied e-commerce extensively, but there is a lack of studies to identify social commerce characteristics to attract potential consumers during COVID-19. This study aims to examine the role of social commerce constructs by integrating social presence as a moderator in the model to explain consumers online shopping intentions in a Pakistani context, where lack of trust on the reliability and validity of comments from other consumers being considered the growing concern toward the success of social commerce. The quantitative data were collected from the respondents living in different cities of Pakistan. Most of the hypothesis supported and demonstrate the positive response from the Pakistani consumers having experience in shopping through social commerce platforms. The findings of this study will help scholars and managers to understand the attitude of Pakistani consumers.

Research examining online social capital has grown since the introduction of information communication technologies (ICTs) into our everyday lives. This paper discusses recent trends in the research that examines how people are using ICTs to accumulate, increase, and utilize their offline and online social capital resources. These trends include the blurring gap between offline and online social capital, examining the use of new platforms to obtain online social capital, increased specificity concerning the types of online social capital that can be sought, how taking advantage of online social capital resources affects personal well-being, and how researchers are moving beyond the college-aged population in their online social capital studies.Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Technology is rapidly changing the nature of service, customers’ service frontline experiences, and customers’ relationships with service providers. Based on the prediction that in the marketplace of 2025, technology (e.g., service-providing humanoid robots) will be melded into numerous service experiences, this article spotlights technology’s ability to engage customers on a social level as a critical advancement of technology infusions. Specifically, it introduces the novel concept of automated social presence (ASP; i.e., the extent to which technology makes customers feel the presence of another social entity) to the services literature. The authors develop a typology that highlights different combinations of automated and human social presence in organizational frontlines and indicates literature gaps, thereby emphasizing avenues for future research. Moreover, the article presents a conceptual framework that focuses on (a) how the relationship between ASP and several key service and customer outcomes is mediated by social cognition and perceptions of psychological ownership as well as (b) three customer-related factors that moderate the relationship between ASP and social cognition and psychological ownership (i.e., a customer’s relationship orientation, tendency to anthropomorphize, and technology readiness). Finally, propositions are presented that can be a catalyst for future work to enhance the understanding of how technology infusion, particularly service robots, influences customers’ frontline experiences in the future.

The Revised Ethopoeia Concept proposes that agents should activate human schema in the form of social expectations and rules. However, studies have demonstrated inconsistent reactions to agents and avatars, potentially due to the activation of a nonhuman schema that constrains people's ability to mentally connect with agents. We first examined whether the schema activated during agent or avatar game play were consistent with and influenced a subsequent interaction with a human. Results suggested that schemas activated across consecutive interactions with an agent and then a human were incongruent, while avatars successfully influenced subsequent interactions with humans (i.e., prosocial behaviors) by evoking congruent schemas. A second experiment corroborated this by demonstrating a match between schemas activated during game play with agents and subsequent interactions with another human-like but nonhuman entity (i.e., artificial intelligence). Additional results and implications related to switching schemas in consecutive interactions with agents and humans are discussed.