Kroczek, Leon O. H. and May, Alexander and Hettenkofer, Selina and Ruider, Andreas and Ludwig, Bernd and Mühlberger, Andreas (2025) The influence of persona and conversational task on social interactions with a LLM-controlled embodied conversational agent. COMPUTERS IN HUMAN BEHAVIOR, 172: 108759. ISSN 0747-5632, 1873-7692
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Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in conversational tasks. Embodying an LLM as a virtual human allows users to engage in face-to-face social interactions in Virtual Reality. However, the influence of person- and task-related factors in social interactions with LLM-controlled agents remains unclear. In this study, forty-six participants interacted with a virtual agent whose persona was manipulated as "extravert" or "introvert" in three different conversational tasks (small talk, knowledge test, convincing). Socialevaluation, emotional experience, and realism were assessed using ratings. Interactive engagement was measured by quantifying participants' words and conversational turns. Finally, we measured participants' willingness to ask the agent for help during the knowledge test. Our findings show that the extraverted agent was more positively evaluated, elicited a more pleasant experience and greater engagement, and was assessed as more realistic compared to the introverted agent. Whereas persona did not affect the tendency to ask for help, participants were generally more confident in the answer when they had help of the LLM. Variation of personality traits of LLM-controlled embodied virtual agents, therefore, affects social-emotional processing and behavior in virtual interactions. Embodied virtual agents allow the presentation of naturalistic social encounters in a virtual environment.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | MODEL; RESPONSES; MACHINES; SYMPATHY; EMPATHY; Personality; Virtual human; Social interaction; Large language model; Virtual reality; Human-computer interaction; Human-AI interaction |
| Subjects: | 000 Computer science, information & general works > 004 Computer science 100 Philosophy & psychology > 150 Psychology |
| Divisions: | Human Sciences > Institut für Psychologie > Lehrstuhl für Klinische Psychologie und Psychotherapie - Lehrstuhl für Psychologie VIII - Prof. Dr. Andreas Mühlberger Languages and Literatures > Institut für Information und Medien, Sprache und Kultur (I:IMSK) > Professur für Informationslinguistik (Prof. Dr. Bernd Ludwig) Informatics and Data Science > Department Human-Centered Computing > Professur für Informationslinguistik (Prof. Dr. Bernd Ludwig) |
| Depositing User: | Dr. Gernot Deinzer |
| Date Deposited: | 06 May 2026 08:22 |
| Last Modified: | 06 May 2026 08:22 |
| URI: | https://pred.uni-regensburg.de/id/eprint/65911 |
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