Using Social Signal Processing and Conversational Agent To Aid People in their Negotiation Skills

Using Social Signal Processing and Conversational Agent To Aid People in their Negotiation Skills: Self-awareness through Mimicry

Chen, Weilun (TU Delft Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)

Jonker, C.M. (mentor)
Oertel, Catharine (mentor)
Hung, H.S. (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Computer Science | Artificial Intelligence

2023-11-08

Negotiation is not a skill that comes naturally to most people. However, most people could benefit from attaining good negotiation skills. Non-verbal behaviour plays an important role in negotiations. Previous studies have shown a link between mimicry through conversational agents and self-regulation of non-verbal behaviour. The current study aims to raise a person’s self-awareness of their non-verbal behaviour through the medium of a conversational agent in negotiation training. An experiment (N = 64) is conducted where participants performed negotiations with an intermediate feedback round where the participants' non-verbal behaviour was played back on a virtual agent. The agent either mimicked the participants’ non-verbal behaviour or exhibited idle behaviour. It was found that the mimicking agent provided better feedback to the participants. Furthermore, repeated negotiations increase a person's self-awareness. The data indicate that raising a person’s self-awareness in negotiation training by utilising non-verbal mimicry through a conversational agent is feasible.

Conversational Agents
Mimicry
Self-Awareness
Non-Verbal Communication
Negotiation

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:0dc7da77-47d1-425f-a1cc-41db1ff66ad4

Student theses

master thesis

© 2023 Weilun Chen