The use of virtual agents in social coaching has increased rapidly in the last decade. In order to train the user in different situations than can occur in real life, the virtual agent should be able to express different social attitudes. In this paper, we propose a model of social attitudes that enables a virtual agent to reason on the appropriate social attitude to express during the interaction with a user given the course of the interaction, but also the emotions, mood and personality of the agent. Moreover, the model enables the virtual agent to display its social attitude through its non-verbal behaviour. The proposed model has been developed in the context of job interview simulation. The methodology used to develop such a model combined a theoretical and an empirical approach. Indeed, the model is based both on the literature in Human and Social Sciences on social attitudes but also on the analysis of an audiovisual corpus of job interviews and on post-hoc interviews with the recruiters on their expressed attitudes during the job interview.
Several research in Human and Social Sciences has shown that most modalities of the body are involved when conveying attitudes: smiles can be signs of friendliness @cite_30 , performing large gestures may be a sign of dominance, and a head directed upwards can be interpreted with a dominant attitude @cite_23 . However, an attitude is not solely displayed by a sign. It is important to consider the succession of signs displayed by the agent as well as the signs displayed by the interlocutors. it is also crucial to consider how the signs of both interlocutors relate to each others. For example, it is only by looking at the sequencing of smile, gaze and head aversion that we can differentiate between amusement, shame and embarrassment, affects expressing different values of dominance @cite_3 .
@cite_30 @cite_3 @cite_23
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Based on the assumptions that relational messages are multidimensional and that they are frequently communicated by nonverbal cues, this experiment manipulated five nonverbal cues -eye contact, proximity, body lean, smiling, and touch - to determine what meanings they convey along four relational message dimensions. Subjects (N= 150) observed 2 out of 40 videotaped conversational segments in which a male-female dyad presented various combinations of the nonverbal cues. High eye contact, close proximity, forward body lean, and smiling all conveyed greater intimacy, attraction, and trust. Low eye contact, a distal position, backward body lean, and the absence of smiling and touch communicated greater detachment. High eye contact, close proximity, and smiling also communicated less emotional arousal and greater composure, while high eye contact and close proximity alone conveyed greater dominance and control. Effects of combinations of cues and sex-differences are also reported. A meta-analysis was conducted on the accuracy of predictions of various objective outcomes in the areas of social and clinical psychology from short observations of expressive behavior (under 5 min). The overall effect size ( ) for the accuracy of predictions for 38 different results was .39. Studies using longer periods of behavioral observation did not yield greater predictive accuracy; predictions based on observations under Vi min in length did not differ significantly from predictions based on 4- and 5-min observations. The type of behavioral channel (such as the face, speech, the body, tone of voice) on which the ratings were based was not related to the accuracy of predictions. Accuracy did not vary significantly between behaviors manipulated in a laboratory and more naturally occurring behavior. Last, effect sizes did not differ significantly for predictions in the areas of clinical psychology, social psychology, and the accuracy of detecting deception. The way in which people move, talk, and gesture—their facial expressions, posture, and speech—all contribute to the formation of impressions about them. Many of the judgments we make about others in our everyday lives are based on cues from these expressive behaviors. Gordon Allport (1937) believed that expressive behaviors were important indicators of personality and that impressions from brief interactions were often verified upon further acquaintance. Allport and Vernon (1933) demonstrated that people's expressive styles were quite consistent across a variety of situations. They then began to investigate the accuracy of perceivers' impressions that were based on observations of these expressive styles. For reasons that have been discussed elsewhere, this issue—like other issues concerning the accuracy of interpersonal and social perception— was neglected for a long time (Funder, 1987; Kenny & Albright, 1987). Recently, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in the accuracy of social and interpersonal perception and judgment (Funder, 1987; Kenny & Albright, 1987; Kruglanski, 1989; Swann, 1984) and in the study of expressive behavior (Lippa, 1983; Riggio & Friedman, 1986). Recent work confirms earlier findings (Passini & Norman, 1966) that the ratings of strangers converge surprisingly well with self-ratings of personality by targets (Albright, Kenny, & Malloy, 1988; Funder & Cohan, 1988; Watson, 1989). This correspondence seems to confirm Gordon Allport's observation that there is something in the nature of individuals that The perception of facial expression and gaze-direction are important aspects of non-verbal communication. Expressions communicate the internal emotional state of others while gaze-direction offers clues to their attentional focus and future intentions. Cortical regions in the superior temporal sulcus (STS) play a central role in the perception of expression and gaze, but the extent to which the neural representations of these facial gestures are overlapping is unknown. In the current study 12 subjects observed neutral faces with direct-gaze, neutral faces with averted-gaze, or emotionally expressive faces with direct-gaze while we scanned their brains with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), allowing a comparison of the hemodynamic responses evoked by perception of expression and averted-gaze. The inferior occipital gyri, fusiform gyri, STS and inferior frontal gyrus were more strongly activated when subjects saw facial expressions than when they saw neutral faces. The right STS was more strongly activated by the perception of averted-gaze than direct-gaze faces. A comparison of the responses within right STS revealed that expression and averted-gaze activated distinct, though overlapping, regions of cortex. We propose that gaze-direction and expression are represented by dissociable overlapping neural systems. Humans and other animals express power through open, expansive postures, and they express powerlessness through closed, contractive postures. But can these postures actually cause power? The results of this study confirmed our prediction that posing in high-power nonverbal displays (as opposed to low-power nonverbal displays) would cause neuroendocrine and behavioral changes for both male and female participants: High-power posers experienced elevations in testosterone, decreases in cortisol, and increased feelings of power and tolerance for risk; low-power posers exhibited the opposite pattern. In short, posing in displays of power caused advantaged and adaptive psychological, physiological, and behavioral changes, and these findings suggest that embodiment extends beyond mere thinking and feeling, to physiology and subsequent behavioral choices. That a person can, by assuming two simple 1-min poses, embody power and instantly become more powerful has real-world, actionable implications.