Top

Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces

Published in:

03-01-2021 | Original Paper

Does an agent’s touch always matter? Study on virtual Midas touch, masculinity, social status, and compliance in Polish men

Authors: Justyna Świdrak, Grzegorz Pochwatko, Andrea Insabato

Published in: Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces | Issue 2/2021

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config

AI-assisted search

Off

Abstract

Traditional gender roles that define what is feminine and masculine also imply that men have higher social status than women. These stereotypes still influence how people interact with each other and with computers. Touch behaviour, essential in social interactions, is an interesting example of such social behaviours. The Midas touch effect describes a situation when a brief touch is used to influence one’s behaviour. Our study aimed to analyse the influence of virtual touch on compliance in men in a decision-making game called Ultimatum. In a series of three studies, we investigated whether social cues such as gender, stereotypical masculine/feminine appearance, and high/low social status modify compliance to offers from embodied agents. We built an immersive version of a repeated Ultimatum game in which a proposer offers how to split ten coins, and a responder accepts or rejects the offer. In study 1, men and women played with a female and a male agent. In study 2 and 3, men played with four agents each, differing in gender and levels of stereotypically seen masculinity and social status. There was no significant touch effect. Compliance was secured mostly by the value of the offer: the more generous the offer, the higher the compliance rate. We also found evidence for the perceived masculinity and social status influence. We also describe relationships between agents’ characteristics and the perception of their touch. The results are discussed in the context of social characteristics that are important in agent design and the effectiveness of social influence techniques in virtual reality.

previous article Internet-based tailored virtual human health intervention to promote colorectal cancer screening: design guidelines from two user studies

next article A novel focus encoding scheme for addressee detection in multiparty interaction using machine learning algorithms

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 390 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Available only for authorised users

In all studies, the skin conductance, heart rate, and electromyographical data were recorded. We decided to exclude these results from the manuscript due to problems with the signal quality, lack of important effects, and space limitations of the manuscript. Data can be obtained from the corresponding author. HR analysis can be found in X, Y. (2019).

https://bluebrick.pl.

Due to the budget and contract limitations, we were not able to remove some of the important limitations of the virtual environment design from study 1.

Gudykunst WB (2003) Cross-cultural and intercultural communication. SAGE, Thousand Oaks

Baugher AR, Gazmararian JA (2015) Masculine gender role stress and violence: a literature review and future directions. Aggress Violent Behav 24:107–112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2015.04.002CrossRef

de Lemus S, Spears R, Bukowski M et al (2013) Reversing implicit gender stereotype activation as a function of exposure to traditional gender roles. Soc Psychol 44:109–116. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000140CrossRef

Rudman LA, Glick P (2001) Prescriptive gender stereotypes and backlash toward Agentic women. J Soc Issues 57:743–762. https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00239CrossRef

Allbeck J, Badler N (2002) Toward representing agent behaviors modified by personality and emotion. In: Embodied conversational agents at AAMAS, pp 15–19

Koda T, Ishioh T, Watanabe T, Kubo Y (2017) Perception of masculinity and femininity of agent’s appearance and self-adaptors. In: van den Herik J, Filipe J (eds) Agents and artificial intelligence. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 3–18CrossRef

Henley NM (1973) Status and sex: some touching observations. Bull Psychon Soc 2:91–93. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03327726CrossRef

Roese NJ, Olson JM, Borenstein MN et al (1992) Same-sex touching behavior: the moderating role of homophobic attitudes. J Nonverbal Behav 16:249–259. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01462005CrossRef

Floyd K (2000) Affectionate same-sex touch: the influence of homophobia on observers’ perceptions. J Soc Psychol 140:774–788. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224540009600516CrossRef

10.

Crusco AH, Wetzel CG (1984) The Midas touch: the effects of interpersonal touch on restaurant tipping. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 10:512–517. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167284104003CrossRef

11.

Guéguen N, Afifi F, Brault S et al (2011) Failure of tactile contact to increase request compliance: the case of blood donation behavior. J Articles Support Null Hypothesis JASNH 8:1–8

12.

Hornik J (2010) Tactile stimulation and consumer response. J Consum Res 19:449–458. https://doi.org/10.1086/209314CrossRef

13.

Pausell S, Goldman M (1984) The effect of touching different body areas on prosocial behavior. J Soc Psychol 122:269–273CrossRef

14.

Brockner J, Pressman B, Cabitt J, Moran P (1982) Nonverbal intimacy, sex, and compliance: a field study. J Nonverbal Behav 6:253–258. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00987192CrossRef

15.

Guéguen N (2002) Status, apparel and touch : their joint effects on compliance to a request. North Am J Psychol 4:279–286

16.

Brown N (2019) Nick Brown’s blog: an update on our examination of the research of Dr. Nicolas Guéguen. In: Nick Brown’s blog. https://steamtraen.blogspot.com/2019/05/an-update-on-our-examination-of.html. Accessed 19 May 2020

17.

Europe ILGA (2020) Annual review of the human rights situation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex People in Europe and Central Asia. ILGA-Europe, Brussels

18.

Doliński D (2010) Touch, compliance, and homophobia. J Nonverbal Behav 34:179–192. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-010-0090-1CrossRef

19.

Doliński D (2013) Male homophobia, touch, and compliance: a matter of the touched, not the toucher. Polish Psychol Bull 44:457–461. https://doi.org/10.2478/ppb-2013-0051CrossRef

20.

Camps J, Tuteleers C, Stouten J, Nelissen J (2013) A situational touch: how touch affects people’s decision behavior. Soc Influence 8:237–250. https://doi.org/10.1080/15534510.2012.719479CrossRef

21.

MCcluskey M (2020) The coronavirus outbreak keeps humans from touching. Here’s why that’s so stressful. Time

22.

Huisman G, Kolkmeier J, Heylen D (2014) With us or against us: simulated social touch by virtual agents in a cooperative or competitive setting. In: Bickmore T, Marsella S, Sidner C (eds) Intelligent virtual agents. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 204–213CrossRef

23.

Hoppe M, Rossmy B, Neumann DP, et al (2020) A human touch: social touch increases the perceived human-likeness of agents in virtual reality. In: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems. Association for Computing Machinery, Honolulu, HI, USA, pp 1–11

24.

Güth W, Schmittberger R, Schwarze B (1982) An experimental analysis of ultimatum bargaining. J Econ Behav Organ 3:367–388. https://doi.org/10.1016/0167-2681(82)90011-7CrossRef

25.

Güth W, Kocher MG (2014) More than thirty years of ultimatum bargaining experiments: motives, variations, and a survey of the recent literature. J Econ Behav Organ 108:396–409. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2014.06.006CrossRef

26.

Nouri E, Traaum D (2014) Cultural differences in playing repeated ultimatum game online with virtual humans. In: 2014 47th Hawaii international conference on system sciences. IEEE, Waikoloa, HI, pp 1213–1220

27.

Spapé MM, Hoggan EE, Jacucci G, Ravaja N (2015) The meaning of the virtual Midas touch: an ERP study in economic decision making. Psychophysiology 52:378–387. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.12361CrossRef

28.

Świdrak J, Pochwatko G, Navarro X et al (2020) The joint influence of social status and personal attitudes in a contact and open versus a noncontact and homophobic culture on the virtual Midas touch. Virtual Real 24:619–633. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-019-00423-8CrossRef

29.

Gallace A, Spence C (2010) The science of interpersonal touch: an overview. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 34:246–259. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2008.10.004CrossRef

30.

Turnbull PRK, Phillips JR (2017) Ocular effects of virtual reality headset wear in young adults. Sci Rep 7:1–9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-16320-6CrossRef

31.

Gelman A, Hill J (2006) Logistic regression. Data analysis using regression and multilevel/hierarchical models. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 79–108CrossRef

32.

Harjunen VJ, Spapé M, Ahmed I et al (2018) Persuaded by the machine: the effect of virtual nonverbal cues and individual differences on compliance in economic bargaining. Comput Hum Behav 87:384–394. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.06.012CrossRef

33.

Spapé M, Harjunen V, Ahmed I et al (2019) The semiotics of the message and the messenger: how nonverbal communication affects fairness perception. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 19:1259–1272. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-019-00738-8CrossRef

34.

Zizzo DJ (2008) Experimenter demand effects in economic experiments. Social Science Research Network, RochesterCrossRef

35.

van Erp JBF, Toet A (2015) Social touch in human-computer interaction. Front Digit Humanit 2:2. https://doi.org/10.3389/fdigh.2015.00002CrossRef

36.

Kilteni K, Groten R, Slater M (2012) The sense of embodiment in virtual reality. Presence Teleoper Virtual Environ 21:373–387. https://doi.org/10.1162/PRES_a_00124CrossRef

Title: Does an agent’s touch always matter? Study on virtual Midas touch, masculinity, social status, and compliance in Polish men
Authors: Justyna Świdrak
Grzegorz Pochwatko
Andrea Insabato
Publication date: 03-01-2021
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Published in: Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces / Issue 2/2021
Print ISSN: 1783-7677
Electronic ISSN: 1783-8738
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12193-020-00351-x

Springer Professional

Abstract

Please log in to get access to your license.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Technik"

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Other articles of this Issue 2/2021

Grounding behaviours with conversational interfaces: effects of embodiment and failures

An expert-model and machine learning hybrid approach to predicting human-agent negotiation outcomes in varied data

Empirical evaluation and pathway modeling of visual attention to virtual humans in an appearance fidelity continuum

Evaluation of avatar and voice transform in programming e-learning lectures

Comparing mind perception in strategic exchanges: human-agent negotiation, dictator and ultimatum games

Verbal empathy and explanation to encourage behaviour change intention

Premium Partner