Effects of Agent's Embodiment in Human-Agent Negotiations

Human-agent negotiation has recently attracted researchers' attention due to its complex nature and potential usage in daily life scenarios. While designing intelligent negotiating agents, they mainly focus on the interaction protocol (i.e., what to exchange and how) and strategy (i.e., how to generate offers and when to accept). Apart from these components, the embodiment may implicitly influence the negotiation process and outcome. The perception of a physically embodied agent might differ from the virtually embodied one; thus, it might influence human negotiators' decisions and responses. Accordingly, this work empirically studies the effect of physical and virtual embodiment in human-agent negotiations. We designed and conducted experiments where human participants negotiate with a humanoid robot in one setting, whereas they negotiate with a virtually embodied replica of that robot in another setting. The experimental results showed that social welfare was statistically significantly higher when the negotiation was held with a virtually embodied robot rather than a physical robot. Human participants took the negotiation more seriously against physically embodied agents and made more collaborative moves in the virtual setting. Furthermore, their survey responses indicate that participants perceived our robot as more humanlike when it is physically embodied.