When Artificial Social Agents Try to Persuade People: The Role of Social Agency on the Occurrence of Psychological Reactance

Abstract

In the near future, robotic agents might employ persuasion to influence people's behavior or attitudes, just as human agents do in many situations. People can comply with these requests, but, people can also experience psychological reactance, which may lead to the complete opposite of the proposed behavior. In this study we are interested in the social nature of psychological reactance. Social agency theory proposes that more social cues lead to a more social interaction. We argue that this also holds for psychological reactance. Therefore, we expect a positive relationship between the level of social agency of the source of a persuasive message and the amount of psychological reactance the message arouses. In an online experiment, participants read an advice on how to conserve energy when using a washing machine. The advice was either provided as text-only, as text accompanied by a still picture of a robotic agent, or as text accompanied by a short film clip of the same robotic agent. Confirming our expectations, results indicated that participants experienced more psychological reactance when the advice was accompanied by the still picture or when the advice was accompanied by the short film clip as compared to when the advice was provided as text-only. This indicates that stronger social agency of the messenger can lead to more psychological reactance. Furthermore, our results confirmed earlier research about the effects of controlling language on psychological reactance. Implications are discussed.

The influence of social cues in persuasive social robots on psychological reactance and compliance

“…research (Roubroeks et al, 2011;Roubroeks et al, 2009). Contrary to our expectations, an agent with medium social agency, (i.e., with minimal social cues) provoked the lowest psychological reactance in both psychological involvement conditions (refer to Fig.…”

“…Then the negative cognitions were counted according to the procedure proposed by Dillard and Shen (2005). After that, the negative cognitions score was submitted as one of the components in psychological reactance measure in percentage form (Roubroeks, Midden, & Ham, 2011).…”

“…For example, earlier researcher has shown that forceful language in persuasive communications in a health campaign can be a source of reactance (Quick & Considine, 2008). An experimental study (Roubroeks, Ham, & Midden, 2011) found that people experience higher psychological reactance when persuasive text messages are accompanied by a still picture of the persuasive agent, or a short film-clip showing the persuader deliver this message, concluding that stronger social agency of the persuasive source can lead to higher psychological reactance. As the interest in applications of artificial agents and especially social robots in care scenarios, it is important to understand how to design these agents to be more effective in their persuasive communication and to avoid that they evoke negative feelings to users.…”

Finding Kairos: The Influence of Context-Based Timing on Compliance with Well-Being Triggers

“…Presenting triggers at the wrong moment in time, might not lead to compliance, or lower levels of compliance. Recent research suggested that using the wrong persuasive strategies might even lead to reactance effects causing users to become angry towards the persuasive technology, and even show behavior that opposes the target behavior [11].…”

Exploring Nonconscious Behaviour Change Interventions on Mobile Devices

“…Reactance has been identified as an issue in BCITs using artificial social agents [33], but the boundaries of its effects on mobile BCITs is unclear. In a worst-case scenario, a user might uninstall or game the system in response to a BCIT telling them how to act.…”