Jonathan Gratch, 4:00pm Tuesday March 5th
University of Southern California
Tuesday, March 5th
Swift 107
4:00pm (Reception to follow)
The Media Equation revisited: Do we really treat computers like people?
Twenty-two years ago, Nass and Reeves published their influential book arguing that people respond to a computer as if they are interacting with another person. This research helped elevate interest in social agents and robots that could leverage this phenomenon across a wide range of applications.
In this talk, I will illustrate that these effects are much weaker than widely supposed, and that the differences in how people treat machines is arguably more interesting that the similarities. These differences can lead to novel insights into human social cognition and unique technological solutions to intractable social problems.