Convincing or Odd: Anthropomorphic Design Cues in Chatbots

Chatbot anthropomorphic design is essential to the perception and behaviors of users who interact with chatbots. However, limited attention has been given to empirical investigations on whether certain anthropomorphic design successfully induce users’ perception of anthropomorphism. To fill in the gap, the study draws on dual-process theory to examine the impact of different design cues on users’ perception of chatbot’s anthropomorphism. By analyzing the data of a between-subject online experiment, we found significant impact of identity cues and communicative cues on users’ perception of anthropomorphism in user-chatbot interaction. Meanwhile, the frequently used visual cues are not so influential as expected in prior studies. Moreover, when multiple cues are present at the same time, a compensation effect is found between the impact of visual/identity cues and that of communicative cues