Alexa Feels Blue And so Do I? Conversational Agents Displaying Emotions via Light Modalities

This paper examines how conversational agents (CAs) can communicate emotions non-verbally using light as communication modality. Therefore, we manipulated the CA Alexa to demonstrate emotions (joy and sorrow) using different light modalities (Echo Dot ring, a Hue lamp and the combination) with either a congruent verbal context (party or funeral) or no verbal context. In an online study 167 participants evaluated the perceived emotion of Alexa, their own emotional state as well as the perception of Alexa after watching a video with a user interacting with Alexa. Although the perceived emotions of Alexa were not affected by the experimental conditions, the results indicate that the perception of Alexa as well as the user’s emotion is affected by the displayed communication modality. As external light can be used to manipulate the users’ perception of CAs, the findings give relevant implications for the design of CAs.