Hi my name is Jessy Ceha and I'd like to welcome you to this talk in which I'll briefly discuss
our work titled: Can a Humorous Conversational Agent Enhance Learning Experience and Outcomes?
This work was conducted by myself with Ken Jen Lee, Elizabeth Nilsen, Joslin Goh and
Edith Law at the University of Waterloo in Canada.
Conversational agents are becoming a prevalent tool for students within computer-mediated
learning environments. Prior work has highlighted the benefits of pedagogical agents using socially-oriented
dialogue with learners such as reassuring them, initiating small talk, and engaging
in mutual self-disclosure -- leading to more positive experiences and promoting learning
gains. There's relatively recently been an increasing interest in using humor for more
enjoyable social interactions with conversational agents. We therefore set out to investigate
the use of humor by social agents in a learning context and specifically whether a humorous
conversational agent could enhance learning experience and outcomes. Humor is an integral
part of human communication and can be expressed verbally and/or non-verbally intended to elicit
responses such as laughter and mirth. In education humor has been shown to decrease stress and
anxiety and enhance self-esteem and self-motivation -- leading to a more positive emotional and
social environment in which learners can pay better attention. In the field of personality
research, humor as a part of an individual's character and the role it plays on the way
they engage with others, has generated growing interest. Such work has led to distinctions
between individual differences and humor style. One of the most prominent contributions in
the field distinguishes between four humor styles: affiliative, self-defeating, self-enhancing,
and aggressive. In this study we chose to compare the two humor styles considered conducive
to social well-being and enhancing interpersonal relationships: affiliative and self-defeating.
Our investigation explored the following research questions: one, does an agent's use of affiliative
or self-defeating humor affect participants: perception of the agent, their attitudes toward
the task, and their ability to recall material? and two, is there an interaction between participants
own humor style and that of the agent? We ran a between subject's experiment with 58
participants in three conditions. Participants interacted with an agent as they taught it
about rock classification using an application called Curiosity Notebook. The agent was represented
by a static avatar and users conversed with the agent by typing and selecting sentences
from the articles provided. Throughout the conversation the agent made different statements
depending on the condition. The first was Affiliative. Affiliative humor is considered
relatively benign and self-accepting. Persons with this humor style commonly tell jokes
and funny stories for the amusement of others and to facilitate relationships. The agent
with an affiliative humor style therefore was designed to occasionally tell jokes throughout
the interaction. The second was self-defeating. Self-defeating humor is characterized by an
excessive use of self-disparaging humor by which the user attempts to amuse others at
their own expense. The main aim of this style of humor is to achieve social acceptance and
approval from others. The agent with a self-defeating humor style interspersed self-disparaging
humor throughout the conversation. The third was neutral. Here the agent expressed no verbal
humor and made statements related to it's self-reflection of learning. The baseline
personality of the agent in all conditions was enthusiastic and curious. At the end of
each interaction associated with the button there was an 80 percent probability the agent
would make an extra statement reflecting the condition. We collected data through questionnaires
as well as logging all user interactions on the application including all button and article
clicks, conversations between participant and agent, articles discussed, and notes recorded
in the notebook. Our results indicate that the two humor styles conducive to interpersonal
relationships and social well-being can both enhance as well as detract from the experience
and outcomes of learners. In general as an addition to an enthusiastic and curious teachable
agent, affiliative humor can increase motivation and effort. Self-defeating humor on the other
hand although increasing effort does not result in as enjoyable an experience and may cause
a decrease in learner's own self-confidence. We also find that humor accentuates the human
likeness of an agent by giving it a personality. This is especially important in settings where
an agent is to interact with users over longer periods of time, where having more of a personality
can be helpful to increase users commitment to a task. Our results also illuminate the
importance of the user's own humor style and how it interacts with the agent's. Some examples
of this are provided in the table. This indicates that care must be taken in the design of pedagogical
agents with one-size-fits-all not always being the most successful when it comes to humor
but that it can lead to enhanced learning experience and outcomes when matched appropriately.
In conclusion our study highlights the benefits of humor expression by pedagogical conversational
agents, especially in the role of a tutee, but also the necessity for more research to
investigate the best timing, context, style, and fit, what effects aggressive and self-enhancing
humor styles may have, and how combinations of different humor styles may influence learning
experiences and outcomes further.
Thank you for your time.