Managing Agent's Impression Based on User's Engagement Detection

When interacting with others, we form an impression that can be declined along the two psychological dimensions of warmth and competence. By managing them, high level of engagement in an interaction can be maintained and reinforced. Our aim is to develop a virtual agent that can form and maintain a positive impression on the user that can help in improving the quality of the interaction and the user's experience. In this paper, we present an interactive system in which a virtual agent adopts a dynamic communication strategy during the interaction with a user, aiming at forming and maintaining a positive impression of warmth and competence. The agent continuously analyzes user's non-verbal signals to determine user's engagement level and adapts its communication strategy accordingly. We present a study in which we manipulate the communication strategy of the agent and we measure user's experience and user's perception of the agent's warmth and competence.