Developing a Personality Model for Speech-based Conversational Agents Using the Psycholexical Approach

Title data

Völkel, Sarah Theres ; Schoedel, Ramona ; Buschek, Daniel ; Stachl, Clemens ; Winterhalter, Verena ; Bühner, Markus ; Hussmann, Heinrich:
Developing a Personality Model for Speech-based Conversational Agents Using the Psycholexical Approach.
2020
Event: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems , 25.04.2020 - 30.04.2020 , Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.
(Conference item: Conference , Paper )
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376210

Project information

Abstract in another language

We present the first systematic analysis of personality dimensions developed specifically to describe the personality of speech-based conversational agents. Following the psycholexical approach from psychology, we first report on a new multi-method approach to collect potentially descriptive adjectives from 1) a free description task in an online survey (228 unique descriptors), 2) an interaction task in the lab (176 unique descriptors), and 3) a text analysis of 30,000 online reviews of conversational agents (Alexa, Google Assistant, Cortana) (383 unique descriptors). We aggregate the results into a set of 349 adjectives, which are then rated by 744 people in an online survey. A factor analysis reveals that the commonly used Big Five model for human personality does not adequately describe agent personality. As an initial step to developing a personality model, we propose alternative dimensions and discuss implications for the design of agent personalities, personality-aware personalisation, and future research.