Designing Computer Agents with Facial Personality to Improve Human-Machine Collaboration

by Tidball, Brian Esley

The development of computer agents to enhance human-computer interfaces is an evolving field of study. This study examined whether people perceive personality in static digital faces that portray expressions of emotion, and if the digital faces would influence human performance on a simple human-machine collaborative task. The first experiment measured user-perception of personality, based on the emotional expression in two sets of five static digital faces. The results from this first phase revealed that participants provided different ratings, of the Big-Five personality model sub-traits, based on the emotional expression of a static digital face. This indicates a perception of personality based on expression. The second experiment measured how faces with identified personality traits influence decision making in a simple collaborative task. The results revealed that the different faces did not have a significant impact on performance criteria. Results from this study indicated some isolated differences related to gender and nationality.