Developing a Personality Model for Speech-based Conversational Agents Using the Psycholexical Approach

Abstract

Sociability as a disposition describes a tendency to affiliate with others (vs. be alone).Yet, we know relatively little about how much social behavior people engage in during a typical day. One challenge to documenting behavioral sociability tendencies is the broad number of channels over which socializing can occur, both in-person and through digital media. To provide an assessment of individual differences in everyday social behavior patterns, here we used smartphone-based mobile sensing methods (MSMs) in four studies (total N = 1078) to collect real-world data about the sensed social behaviors of young adults across four communication channels: conversations, phone calls, text messages, and messaging and social media application use. To examine individual differences, we first focused on establishing between-person variability in daily social behavior, examining stability of and relationships among daily sensed social behavior tendencies. To explore factors that may explain the observed individual differences in sensed social behavior, we then expanded our focus to include other time estimates (e.g., times of the day, days of the week) and personality traits. In doing so, we present the first large-scale descriptive portrait of behavioral sociability patterns, characterizing the degree of social behavior young adults typically engaged in and mapping behavioral to self-reported personality dispositions. Our discussion focuses on how the observed sociability patterns compare to previous research on young adults' social behavior. We conclude by pointing to areas for future research aimed at understanding sociability using mobile sensing and other naturalistic observation methods for the assessment of social behavior.

Identifying Personality Dimensions for Engineering Robot Personalities in Significant Quantities with Small User Groups

“…Another limitation is that the test procedure is not a guarantee for the applicability of personality dimensions based on the lexical hypothesis. For guaranteed applicability, we will need to develop dedicated personality models for robots based on lexicons for describing robots, as a recent study did for conversational agents [9]. Dedicated models can be used together with the test procedure to identify engineeringworthy dimensions for a type of robot.…”

“…Human personality models are often empirical formulations based on a lexicon formed overtime for describing humans, as explained by the lexical hypothesis [7,8]. Lexicons for describing humans do not necessarily apply to describing artificial agents [9]. It violates the lexical hypothesis to apply a human personality model to robots that are not created to resemble human presences (i.e., androids).…”

Conversational Agents: Goals, Technologies, Vision and Challenges

“…Inspired by the vision of human-like interactions of conversational agents, Volkel et al [112] examine the important features of a CA's personality. They used various sources to examine the main adjectives used by CAs, including an online survey, an interaction task in the lab, and a text analysis of 30,000 online reviews of CAs.…”

What Do We See in Them? Identifying Dimensions of Partner Models for Speech Interfaces Using a Psycholexical Approach

“…With a long history in personality and individual diferences research, the approach also underscores a number of diferent cognitive, psychoanalytic and behavioural techniques [81]. Historically it has been used to distinguish the interpersonal traits of people and products, including technological artifacts [67,128] and assistive technologies [116]. The basic tenet behind the psycholexical approach is that people's perceptions of an experience become encoded in their language [128], which can be accessed introspectively.…”

“…Historically it has been used to distinguish the interpersonal traits of people and products, including technological artifacts [67,128] and assistive technologies [116]. The basic tenet behind the psycholexical approach is that people's perceptions of an experience become encoded in their language [128], which can be accessed introspectively. This data can then be analysed using a variety of cluster analysis techniques to identify consistencies across the terms people use to defne their perceptions, outlining the underlying dimensions of a given construct [128].…”