The Relational Agents project researches ways to use computer agents to form long-term social and emotional relationships with their users. Many of their projects explore using agents for healthcare and healthy behavior change. One area of investigation is whether the agents should speak directly to users or not.

• Users liked the interaction better when agents spoke about themselves as though they were a real person with a real personal history.
• Users spent more time with the “first person” agents than those that just talked about other people (that is, in third person).

Links

• Relational Agents web site