Intelligent Virtual Agents

We collect observational data from real human conversations, and develop a measure of how much participants experienced bonding or chemistry. We analyze the effects of personality and attitudes on bonding, and find that attentiveness and excitement are more effective at promoting bonding than traits like attractiveness and humour.

Given only one-minute slices of facial expressions and body language, we use machine learning to accurately predict whether two humans having a conversation will bond with each other. We analyze factors which lead to bonding and discover that synchrony in body language and appropriate, empathetic facial expressions lead to higher bonding.