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Measuring Interpersonal Trust towards Virtual Humans with a Virtual Maze Paradigm
Lin, Jinghuai; Cronjé, Johrine; Käthner, Ivo; u. a. (2023): Measuring Interpersonal Trust towards Virtual Humans with a Virtual Maze Paradigm, in: IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, New York: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Jg. 29, Nr. 5, S. 2401–2411, doi: 10.1109/tvcg.2023.3247095.
Faculty/Chair:
Author:
Title of the Journal:
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
ISSN:
1077-2626
1941-0506
2160-9306
Publisher Information:
Year of publication:
2023
Volume:
29
Issue:
5
Pages:
Language:
English
Abstract:
Virtual humans, including virtual agents and avatars, play an increasingly important role as VR technology advances. For example, virtual humans are used as digital bodies of users in social VR or as interfaces for AI assistants in online financing. Interpersonal trust is an essential prerequisite in real-life interactions, as well as in the virtual world. However, to date, there are no established interpersonal trust measurement tools specifically for virtual humans in virtual reality. This study fills the gap, by contributing a novel validated behavioural tool to measure interpersonal trust towards a specific virtual social interaction partner in social VR. This validated paradigm is inspired by a previously proposed virtual maze task that measures trust towards virtual characters. In the current study, a variant of this paradigm was implemented. The task of the users (the trustors) is to navigate through a maze in virtual reality, where they can interact with a virtual human (the trustee). They can choose to 1) ask for advice and 2) follow the advice from the virtual human if they want to. These measures served as behavioural measures of trust. We conducted a validation study with 70 participants in a between-subject design. The two conditions did not differ in the content of the advice but in the appearance, tone of voice and engagement of the trustees (alleged as avatars controlled by other participants). Results indicate that the experimental manipulation was successful, as participants rated the virtual human as more trustworthy in the trustworthy condition than in the untrustworthy condition. Importantly, this manipulation affected the trust behaviour of our participants, who, in the trustworthy condition, asked for advice more often and followed advice more often, indicating that the paradigm is sensitive to assessing interpersonal trust towards virtual humans. Thus, our paradigm can be used to measure differences in interpersonal trust towards virtual humans and may serve as a valuable research tool to study trust in virtual reality.
Keywords: ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Avatars
Psychology
Games
Particle measurements
Atmospheric measurements
Task analysis
Investment
virtual human
specific interpersonal trust
trustworthiness
social VR
behavioural measurement paradigm
virtual reality
DDC Classification:
RVK Classification:
Peer Reviewed:
Yes:
International Distribution:
Yes:
Type:
Article
Activation date:
December 8, 2023
Versioning
Question on publication
Permalink
https://fis.uni-bamberg.de/handle/uniba/92319