in Human-Computer Interaction social interaction play a role in this response. Reciprocity is the

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1 Social Response and Cultural Dependency in Human-Computer Interaction Yugo Takeuchi 1 Yasuhiro Katagiri 1 Cliord I. Nass 2 B. J. Fogg 2 1 ATR MI&C Research Labs., Kyoto , Japan 2 Stanford University, Stanford, CA USA Abstract. Human-Computer interaction may be correlated with social interaction and cultural norms. We examined how Japanese and American people respond to a computer as a social entity and how cultural dierences between Japanese and American behavioral norms in reciprocal social interaction play a role in this response. Reciprocity is the most powerful and universal factor governing social interaction between humans. This study explores the validity of the hypothesis that Human- Computer interaction displays the same dynamics as Human-Human interaction. The results of the experiment indicate that people exhibit behaviors in accordance with social norms of reciprocity, and that there is cultural dependence in people's reaction to computers. 1 Introduction Research on intelligent agents have been focusing on creating an adaptive and powerful communication partner with humans, which would become a legitimate social member of a \cyber society." A number of techniques have been pursued and proposed to further this purpose in various elds, such as AI, multimodal interfaces, pattern recognition, and Alife. These technology-driven approaches aim to come up with a technologically feasible specication to create human-like qualities in physical artifacts[1, 2, 3]. However, research on socially acceptable intelligent agents would never be complete if they ignored the aspect of how humans respond to physical artifacts. To that end, we need to perform a systematic comparison of the similarities and dierences between Human-Human social communication and Human-Artifact communication. Reeves and Nass explored in their book \The Media Equation" [4] human responses to computers and other media. They have been specically focusing on social aspects of human responses, and have found that human responses to media technologies are fundamentally social in the sense that social factors governing Human-Human interactions equally apply to Human-Computer interactions. Our study expands on their studies and examine cultural dependencies of human social responses to computers. We present, in this paper, the results of two psychological experiments about reciprocal social interaction. The rst experiment explores the validity of the hypothesis that Human-Computer interaction displays the same dynamics as Human-Human interaction. The second

2 experiment compares how Japanese and American people respond to a computer as a social entity and how cultural dierences between Japanese and American behavioral norms play a role in this response. 2 Social Responses to Computers 2.1 Reciprocity in Human-Computer Interaction We apply experimental methods of sociopsychological studies in comparing social responses in Human-Computer interaction with interpersonal behaviors in Human-Human interaction. The domain we chose for our study is reciprocity in social interaction. The social norm of reciprocity holds that people should help those who help them [5]. When people in need get help, they often feel indebted to their benefactors and often actually return the favor in some form or other. This reciprocation of favor is a powerful and universal norm across all human cultures [6]. This human social norm poses an interesting set of questions: If the rule of reciprocity is indeed as powerful and universal as social psychology studies indicate, will the rule also apply when people interact with computers? In other words, will people feel indebted to a computer that provides a benet, and will people subsequently reciprocate to that computer? Furthermore, if people do reciprocate to a computer, will the reciprocation behavior reect culturally specic style of reciprocation patterns between humans? 2.2 Cultural dimension in reciprocity Social interaction also follows expected behavioral styles in the respective societies in which people live. In other words, people's behaviors obey their cultural rules or norms. There are striking dierences among the cultures of the world. Cross-cultural studies in social psychology often refer to individualism/collectivism dichotomy among dierent cultures. In a collectivism culture, such as in Japanese culture, people generally associate with others on a group-oriented basis, and people's behaviors are strongly inuenced by the considerations of one's aliating groups [7], whereas in an individualism culture, such as in American culture, people associate with others on a more individual-oriented basis and group considerations do not play a signicant role in people's behaviors [8]. If we apply this individualism/collectivism dichotomous distinction to humancomputer interactions, it is expected that this dierence in cultural background also reveals itself as a dierence in styles of social responses to computers. We hypothesize, specically in our experimental context on reciprocity, that Japanese participants should be more sensitive to group considerations in their reciprocal behaviors to computers.

3 3 Experiments on Reciprocity 3.1 General Experiment Setup and Tasks The focus of the rst experiment is to verify the hypothesis that people (unconsciously) observe the social norm of reciprocity even when they interact with computers. An investigation into reciprocity and computers would do well to follow experimental procedure similar to human-human reciprocity studies (Goranson & Berkowitz, 1966; Greenberg & Frisch, 1972). The basic experiment would create a situation in which a human recipient rst receives a benet from a computer donor, and then the human subject is given a chance to reciprocate back to one or the other computers. This requires two tasks, one which follows immediately after the other. We used the Desert Survival Task (DST) for computers beneting humans, and the Color Perception Task (CPT) for humans reciprocating back to computers (Fig. 1). Sam e Com puter DS Task CP Task High / Low lovel HELP Different Com puter RECIPRO CA TE? RECIPRO CA TE? Fig. 1. Design of the experiment. Desert Survival Task (DST) People receive help from a computer, in the form of information retrieved from a Web database, while performing the task of ordering several items according to their importance for survival in the desert (Fig. 2). Color Perception Task (CPT) People help a computer by performing the task of ordering color palettes by perceived brightness. The more palettes they order, the more they help the computer. People can stop ordering as soon as they like after ve trials ordering the color palettes. The subjects may work with the original benefactor computer or with a completely dierent computer (Fig. 3).

4 Fig. 2. Computer Display Example in the Desert Survival Task (DST). Fig. 3. Computer Display Example in the Color Perception Task (CPT). 3.2 Conditions Helpfulness factor in Desert Survival Task In the Desert Survival Task, participants receive information from a benefactor computer to help perform the item ordering task. Although the information is presented to the participants in the form of the result of an on-the-y database search, it actually was pre-packaged. We prepared two sets of information, diering in their helpfulness in solving the Desert Survival Task. These Helpful/Unhelpful conditions constitute two levels of the Helpfulness factor. { Helpful condition The set of information presented to the participants contains all useful and carefully selected information for solving the DST task. The information is also presented to the participants as the best ve suitable items of information extracted from a set of twenty three virtual Web databases. { Unhelpful condition The set of information presented to the participants contains all completely irrelevant pieces of information for a desert survival situation chosen by a simple keyword match. The information is also presented to the participants as the rst ve items of information encountered in the database search. Computer factor in Color Perception Task

5 In the Color Perception Task, participants are requested to help a computer, after they worked with a computer in the Desert Survival Task. The computer a participant work with in the Color Perception Task may be the same computer as the one she worked with in the Desert Survival Task, or it may be a dierent computer. These Same/Dierent computer conditions constitute two levels of the Computer factor. Other than the dierence in which computer to work with, participants interact with computers in exactly the same way in both conditions. { Same computer condition Participants are given an opportunity to reciprocate help, by performing the color palette ordering task, to the same computer from which they have received help in DST task. { Dierent computer condition Participants are to help, by performing the color palette ordering task, a dierent computer from which they have received help in DST task. 4 Experiment Procedure The focus of the rst experiment is to verify the hypothesis that people (unconsciously) observe the social norm of reciprocity even when they interact with computers. An investigation into reciprocity and computers would do well to follow experimental procedure similar to human-human reciprocity studies[9,?]. The basic experiment would create a situation in which a human recipient rst receives a benet from a computer donor, and then the human subject is given a chance to reciprocate back to one or the other computers. This requires two tasks. In the DST, people get help from a computer in the form of information retrieved from Web database while performing the task assigned to them, ordering several items according to their importance for the survival from distress in the desert. The information may be helpful or not helpful. In the CPT, people help a computer by performing the task of ordering color palettes by perceived brightness. The more palettes they ordered, the more they helped the computer. The subjects may work with the original benefactor computer or with a completely dierent computer. Both American subjects (72) and Japanese subjects (55) were randomly assigned one of the four experimental conditions, which were designed by the cross of the hulpful/unhelpful helpfulness factor and the same/dierent computer factor (Table 1.). Our hypothesis on universal applicability of reciprocity norms in humancomputer interactions predicts that the more help people receive from a computer, the more indebted they feel and subsequently the more they reciprocate to the computer with their behaviors. In our experimental setup, the participants of H-S condition group will complete more ordering tasks in the CPT than the

6 Table 1. Experimental conditions for Experiment 1. Same Computer Dierent Computer Helpful H-S H-D Unhelpful U-S U-D H-D group, and participants of U-S condition group will complete fewer ordering tasks in the CPT than the U-D group. Therefore, a statistical crossover two-way interactions between the Helpfulness factor and the Computer factor. 4.2 Results Before proceeding to the main analysis, we tested whether the manipulation of the information items (content based vs. keyword match) indeed had the eect of providing helpful and unhelpful assistance to the participants. This was done using the scores from a post-experiment questionnaire in which participants indicated how helpfulthey had found the information oered in the DST. A signicant dierence was found between the Helpful condition and the Unhelpful condition [ American: F(1; 75) = 184:150; p < :001, Japanese: F (1; 54) = 70:946; p < :001 ]. Participants assigned to the Helpful condition took the suggestions they received as actually helpful, and those assigned to the Unhelpful condition took the suggestions they received as actually unhelpful. Means of Color Comparison F(1,72)=8.483, p<.005, MSe= Same Americans Different Helpful Unhelpful Means of Color Comparison Helpful Unhelpful F(1,51)=4.224, p<.05, MSe= Same Japanese Different Fig. 4. Result of Experiment 1 The result of American subjects show crossover interaction between Helpfulness factor and Computer factor [F (1; 72) = 8:483; p < :05] (Fig. 4 (left)). American subjects behaved exactly as our hypothesis predicted in terms of reciprocating help to computers. The norm of reciprocity in human-human interactions is applied even in human-computer interactions. The Japanese participants' behaviors exhibited a signicantly dierent pattern from those of American participants (Fig. 4 (right)). It did not show the reciprocity eect at all. The more helpful information didn't lead to more return, and the less helpfull information didn't lead to less return, either. Japanese

7 subjects did not behave as our hypothesis predicted in terms of reciprocating help to computers. Instead, we found the main eect on Helpfulness factor [ F(1; 51) = 4:750; p < :05 ]. Japanese participants reciprocated more when they received helpful information, regardless of the identity of the individual computers to which she is to respond. 4.3 Discussion Dierences in reciprocal behaviors between American and Japanese participants observed in Experiment 1 might be attributed to the dierence in their respective culture. In Experiment 2, two computers in the Same computer and the Dierent computer conditions were placed next to each other in a room. They were not dierent in appearances except for their desktop background colors. One possible explanation of the behaviors of the Japanese participants would be that, in contrast to the individual-oriented reciprocal behaviors manifested in American participants, Japanese participants conceptually grouped the two computers together to form a group, and directed their reciprocal responses toward this group rather than toward individual computers. The results of Experiment 1 was consistent with this explanation. Cross-cultural studies in social psychology often refer to individualism/collectivism dichotomy among dierent cultures[8]. The focus of the second experiment is to investigate this dichotomy within the context of reciprocity behaviors in humancomputer interaction. Our hypothesis is that even in human-computer interaction, American subjects tend to respond individually to computers, whereas Japanese subjects tend to respond more collectively to computers. The result of the former experiment have already conrmed individualistic nature in responses to computers by American subjects. 5 EXPERIMENT Procedure We created two dierent groups of computers: Group A computers and Group B computers which are of dierent types: Macintoshes or PCs. We again used the DST and the CPT for the experiment. The manipulation of a Group membership factor produces the following three dierent target possibilities for reciprocation shown in Fig. 5 and Table 2. In the gure, C1 is the original benefactor computer which provided helpful suggestions in the DST. { S-SG: Same computer/same group Perform CPT with the same computer as the benefactor computer (C1), { D-SG: Dierent computer/same group Perform CPT with a dierent computer which nevertheless shares membership to a group with the original benefactor (C2),

8 Table 2. Experimental conditions of the Experiment 2. Same Group Dierent Group Same Comp. Dier. Comp. Dier. Comp. S-SG (R1) D-SG (R2) D-DG (R3) { D-DG: Dierent computer/dierent group Perform CPT with a completely dierent computer which belongs to a dierent group from the original benefactor (C3). We examined how Japanese participants respond to the computers in each cases. Total of 80 Japanese participants were randomly assigned to the three conditions. In order to prevent ordering eect, we tried out both Macintosh as Group A computers and PC compatibles as Group B computers, and its converse assignment. Benefactor former help R1 R2 R3 Beneficiary Fig. 5. Design of the Experiment 2. If the hypothesis that the Japanese cultural norm makes people reciprocate toward a group rather than toward an individual is correct, then there will be little dierence between R1 and R2, because C1 and C2 come from the same group. However, R3, rates of reciprocation to a dierent group computer C3, should be signicantly lower than both R1 and R2 because C3 not only is a dierent individual but also comes from a dierent group from the original benefactor C1.

9 5.2 Results The results of Experiment 3 are shown in Fig. 6. We obtained a signicant main eect among the three conditions [F (2; 80) = 6:600; p < :01]. Close examination revealed that there are signicant dierences both between R1 and R3 [p < :01], and between R2 and R3 [p < :01], whereas no signicant dierence was observed between R1 and R2. Means of Color Comparison S-SG (R1) D-SG (R2) D-DG (R3) Conditions Fig. 6. Result of Experiment 3 People responded nicely to computers as long as they belong to the same group as the original benefactor computer. This result demonstrated that reciprocation behavior of Japanese subjects was group-oriented rather than individualoriented. Together with the result of the rst experiment, this result conrmed our hypothesis that cultural dierence of individualism/collectivism in social behaviors carries over to Human-Computer interactions. 6 Conclusions Our study on reciprocal behaviors in Human-Computer interaction demonstrated that: 1. People treat computers as social actors and respond as though computers are real humans.

10 2. People implicitly apply social norms in Human-Computer interaction based on their own cultural background. These ndings have tremendous import for Human-Computer interface design. Interface design has to take into account who the users are and what cultural background they have. It also has to be aware of the possibility that a computer could set a social norm for a group. People are sensitive to social group membership, and they may try to conform to computer generated social norms. References 1. B. Laurel, \Interface Agents: Metaphors with Character", In The Art of Human- Computer Interface Design, Addison-Wesley (1990) 2. K. Nagao, A. Takeuchi, \Social Interaction: Multimodal Conversation with Social Agents", Proceedings of the 12th National Conference on Articial Intelligence (AAAI-94), Vol.1 (1994) N. Tosa, R. Nakatsu, \Life-like Communication Agent { Emotion Sensing Character MIC and Feeling Session Character MUSE", Proceedings of the ICMCS (1996) B. Reeves, C. Nass, The Media Equation, Cambridge University Press. (1996) 5. A. W. Gouldner, \The norm of reciprocity: A preliminary statement", American Sociological Review, Vol.25 (1960) R. B. Cialdini, Inuence: Science and practice, 3rd ed., Harper Collins (1993) 7. C. Nakane, \Inuence: Science and practice", 3rd ed., Harper Collins (1993) 8. H. C. Triandis, \Cross-Cultural Studies of Individualism and Collectivism", In Dienstbier, R. A. (Ed.), CURRENT THEORY AND RESEARCH IN MOTIVA- TION, University of Nebraska Press. (1990) 9. L. Berkowitz & W. H. Connor, \Success, failure and social responsibility", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol.4 (1966) This article was processed using the LaT E X macro package with LLNCS style