TR#502: This Computer Responds to User Frustration

Jonathan Klein, Youngme Moon and Rosalind Picard

Appears in CHI99 Proceedings - Late-Breaking Results
CHI99 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Pittsburgh, PA

3 pages

A human-computer interaction (HCI) agent was designed and built to support users in their ability to recover from negative emotional states, particularly frustration. The agent uses social-affective feedback strategies delivered to the user with text-only interaction. The agent's effectiveness was evaluated against two control conditions: (1) users' emotions were ignored, and (2) users were able to report problems and "vent" their feelings and thoughts to the computer. Behavioral results showed that the agent was significantly more effective than the control conditions in helping relieve frustration levels.

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